


ghost of you

by confessa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Not Canon Compliant, Panic Attacks, Past Character Death, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Swearing, Tony Stark Has Trust Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, mainly from the description of the zombies, the zombie AU that none of you asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-14 10:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14767509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confessa/pseuds/confessa
Summary: “I detect a heat signature - coordinates displayed on the screen. Scanning - 87.52% human.”ORTony is the last human on Earth, or so he thinks. Until Peter Parker stumbles upon his compound.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wrote this on a complete whim after I felt an anxiety attack coming on and I needed to distract myself - clearly the best time to be writing a new story.
> 
> I'm so sorry. 
> 
> Also, sorry for typos.

 

Tony had been in his basement lab when the explosion sent a violent shudder through the compound walls. It barely registered on his mind. It was rare that the - the _things_ , the zombies or the undead or whatever the hell they were, the media had given them too many names to keep count when the media actually still existed - got far enough into the perimeter defences that they triggered the explosives. Still, every so often, a horde did stumble upon the compound and overwhelm the first few rounds of traps until they managed to reach the inner walls. It wasn't a big deal. A waste of explosives, sure, but it happened rarely enough that Tony preferred to keep the defence line-up as it was. He glanced over at the security screen on the opposite wall of the lab, took note of any lingering creatures, and returned to his work. There were only a handful still struggling to crawl towards the compound walls - limbs askew and heads half blown off - and those would be easily stopped by the rows of spears that circled the compound. Explosives were powerful and cool, but loud, and Tony preferred to rely on quieter, more modest, and less energy-sucking weapons as much as he could.

 

That would have been the end of it, except it was just 10 seconds after Tony returned to his work - he had managed to salvage some dormant tech from the Osborn labs in New York just the other week, and was experimenting to see how much energy he could wring out of the blasted thing - that F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke up.

 

“Boss.”

 

Tony nearly jumped out of his skin.

 

“Friday? What the fuck?”

 

The sound of his own voice was almost foreign to him and it actually hurt to speak - when was the last time he had spoken out aloud?

 

Tony had reprogrammed the AI to only trigger in the most limited of circumstances. AIs took up a lot of energy, and as much as he craved someone - _anybody_ \- to talk to, he couldn’t keep F.R.I.D.A.Y. on 24/7 like he had done without a thought in the past. Now, there were only three situations in which F.R.I.D.A.Y. was supposed to turn on without his express command. One, if Tony’s vitals were reaching critical levels, she was supposed to deploy emergency medical care - and Tony was feeling very much fine, holed up in his lab. Second, if the second-last perimeter defences were breached, his combat-mode nano-tech suit would be powered up along with an immediate shutdown of the compound. Tony looked up at the screen again - the last of the zombies were skewered on the spears, which was the third-last line of defence, and there were no other breaches, so that wasn't it. Which only left the third situation.

 

“I detect a heat signature - coordinates displayed on the screen. Scanning - 87.52% human.”

 

 _87.52%?_ _What the hell does that mean?_

 

Tony's heart began to beat loud in his chest. A reminder of his mortality - one of the last few humans to probably roam this Earth. He had searched - oh god, he had searched for so long. After Pepper and Happy and the rest of the people around him had succumbed to the plague, he had flown as far as he could - he needed to conserve his energy sources - trying to find another human. 

 

All he found were those... _things_ . The monsters that roamed the world. Who knew all those doomsday movies about zombie apocalypses would actually come true? It was downright laughable. Tony sometimes still woke up in the middle of the night - sweaty, panting, hand reaching out for Pepper and fully expecting his fingers to connect with the soft strands of her hair - words on the tip of his tongue, ready to make some sarcastic, joking remark about the ridiculous nightmare that he had about freaking _zombies_.

 

Except it wasn’t a dream or a nightmare - it was fucking real.

 

“Boss.” F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke again, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Would you like to investigate the heat source? The perimeter defences have not been engaged as per Protocol 35.”

 

Tony drew in a deep breath. He couldn’t lose it now. Not after all these months of silence and empty halls. Outside, there might be another human. Another living, breathing human. Or well, something that was 87.52% human, whatever that meant. Maybe F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s scanners needed some tinkering. 

 

“Power up the suit.” Tony said, forcing his voice to be steady. It still came out cracked. He cleared his throat. “Scan the area for any of the… the things. I’m going out.”

 

“Understood.”

 

It took only a few minutes for Tony to suit up, the nanotech rapidly forming an impenetrable armour around him. He doubted anyone still existed that could breach it - the mindless zombies definitely couldn’t - but one could never be too safe. He hadn’t spent the past six months using every resource he had to keep himself alive and find another human, only to be offed as soon as he actually met said human.

 

Tony flew up into the air. F.R.I.D.A.Y. came alive in his suit, for the first time in half a year, and a pang of nostalgia - painful, aching - hit him. There was a time when he had been a superhero. There was a time when crowds had sung and cheered when he suited up. A spectacle.

 

 _Iron Man._  

 

The name, forgotten and worthless now. There was no one left to remember it. 

 

The heat signature was at the front entrance, lingering about a half-mile out from the gates. Chances were they had actually walked up to the compound, which either meant they had good intentions, or Tony was being distracted by a trap. A sentient, thinking human should be able to get past the first rounds of Tony's defences. They would be stopped by the last few though - Tony had seen enough episodes of The Walking Dead to know that in a post-apocalyptic world where resources were scarce, humans would very much fight each other instead of banding together. He assumed television shows were at least partially accurate in their reading of the human psyche. 

 

It was dark outside - the clock at the bottom-left of his HUD read 2 a.m. - which was a dangerous time for anyone to be roaming the streets. Whoever it was, was desperate, or, again, luring him out. 

 

“Fri, sense any weapons? Any other heat sources? Anything out of the ordinary.”

 

“Nothing has appeared on my scanners, Boss. This is the only heat source with a human composition in my 5 mile-radius field of detection. As for weapons, if they are any, they will be small-scale. Nothing that could harm you in the suit.”

 

“Good.”

 

Tony’s heart was still beating too loudly in his chest. After so long, he might speak to someone again. He didn’t know how to feel. Relief? Exhilaration? Happiness? Fear? He wondered vaguely if he would even remember how to speak to another person. Pepper was the last person he had spoken to. Pepper, whose blood was on his hands. 

 

Tony came to a stop right above the heat signature. He couldn’t tell what the person looked like in the darkness.

 

“Should I switch on the area lights?” F.R.I.D.A.Y. asked.

 

He hesitated. A sudden, crippling fear rose in him. Well, that settled the battle of emotions. He didn’t even know what he was afraid of. Just that his voice had died and his thoughts were dying pretty quickly too. 

 

“Boss?”

 

“I-” Tony licked his lips. His throat was so fucking dry. Hadn’t he just drank a glass of water before coming out? “I-”

 

“Boss, I believe the human is trying to get your attention.”

 

So they were. The person was waving their arms. It was an actual person. Alive.

 

“Light the place up.” Tony said, voice barely above a whisper.

 

It was almost a glorious scene - within a second of his command, the floodlights came to life, illuminating the road and the unkempt grounds around with painful clarity, a brilliant white that Tony had to turn away from.

 

It took nearly a minute to adjust before Tony could finally look down at the ground below him.

 

There, crouched on the tarmac road leading up to the compound, dressed in torn garments and holding nothing but a single backpack, was a child, a boy. His frame was small, clothes hanging off him in a way that suggested he had once been fuller, healthier. Tony couldn't see his face. The boy - if he was a boy - was on his knees, hands covering his face as if he was in pain.

 

Tony hovered for a moment longer, trying to steady his breathing, bring his heart-rate down.

 

Finally, _finally_ , he lowered himself to the ground.

 

The boy slowly moved his hands away from his face. Okay, it was definitely a boy, and he couldn't be more than sixteen. His eyes were squinting, as if the lights hurt him.

 

“Who are you?” Tony asked. There was a lump in his throat - he couldn’t have explained why.

 

“I’m…” The boy’s voice cracked. Clearly, he hadn’t been speaking much either. He took a moment, eyes shutting tight again before he slowly blinked them open. “Peter. I’m Peter. Please, can I come in? Please, Mr. Stark. Iron Man.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL Imagine if I actually finished this.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in the day, Tony had to practically hole himself up in the lab to escape the dozens of people that were constantly milling around him. If he could turn back time, he would take them all out for drinks, thank them for sticking with him, give them each a raise just for being there.
> 
> Now, all he had was this kid in his kitchen, inhaling a bowl of mushroom soup at 3 in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU FOR ALL THE LOVELY COMMENTS. Seriously, they make my day. I have a stressful job and reading people's reactions made me smile so hard they hurt my cheeks. 
> 
> I wrote, re-wrote, and re-wrote this again. I am not entirely happy with the chapter, and I actually planned for this chapter to be much longer. It wasn't flowing the way I wanted though and I eventually split it into two. I'm a couple of chapters ahead so I know should reach chapter 4. Ha.

 

_Iron Man._

 

Tony couldn’t quite remember the last time someone had called him that. Flashbacks whirred through his mind like a film reel - Afghanistan, the torture, Yinsen, the weapons with his name on it, bold like an accusation, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the script that Coulson had explicitly told him to follow. It was a name out of time. It didn’t belong here, not anymore, not when the world no longer needed superheroes. There wasn’t a world to need superheroes.

 

And yet, and _yet._

 

“Please.” The boy - Peter - was saying. “I just...I need...I’m not one of them.”

 

The rational part of Tony’s brain warned him to be cautious and keep his distance from the boy first. The decidedly irrational part of his brain wanted him to run over, yank the kid to his feet and cheer at how someone existed, someone still existed that _remembered_ who he was.

 

“Friday, anything?” Tony said, clamping down on his thoughts. Something stirred in the boy’s eyes - an expression akin to hope. Tony knew the question that was coming and winced.  

 

“There are other people alive too? In there?”

 

F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke before Tony could respond. “There is a knife in his bag. Other than that, I detect no weapons on his body. Scans show no presence of the plague, although I would recommend running blood samples to confirm whether he has been infected.”

 

For a brief moment, the boy looked like he had choked on something. His body, previously shaking, abruptly stilled and his fists and jaw clenched hard, as if he was holding back something.

 

It was almost like he had heard F.R.I.D.A.Y.

 

 _87.52%_.

 

Then Tony blinked, the moment passed, and the boy was crouching low again.

 

“Please, I just...I walked here from New York and I’m not one of them.” The kid’s voice cracked. Tears pooled in his eyes. “Just let me in.”

 

“Boss.” F.R.I.D.A.Y. murmured in his ears. “The lights are attracting non-sentient life forms. I would recommend returning to the compound and shutting down all lights within the next two minutes.”

 

“Fuck.” Tony said. “Okay, okay. Kid-”

 

The boy’s head perked up.

 

“I’m gonna carry you inside.”

 

The tension escaped the kid’s body at his words, relief washing over his face as Tony stepped towards him. The nerves hit him again, except this time it wasn’t just excitement. One feet away from the boy, Tony half-expected the kid’s arm to swing at his head, teeth bared, mouth gargling with the groan of those things.

 

Tony swallowed hard. This was just a kid. Nothing but a kid. He had a name, too - Peter.

 

And when Tony gathered him in his metal arms and lifted him up, there was something else in Peter’s eyes that triggered a wave of nostalgia. It wasn’t just apprehension or relief or exhaustion. It was a look Tony was - no, had been - familiar with. It was the look of wonder in a child’s eyes when they met him, when they begged him to don the Iron Man suit.

 

_I hope they remember you._

 

Then they were off, Peter safely in Tony’s metallic grasp and F.R.I.D.A.Y. dutifully shutting off the floodlights below them. The darkness that followed was almost comforting.

 

+++

 

Tony flew to the ground floor landing space, rather than straight into the second floor like he usually did. He couldn’t help it. He had made a decision to bring the kid into the compound but it felt too much, too sudden, to bring him directly into his living quarters. It almost felt like an invasion of privacy.

 

_Great, now I’m concerned with privacy._

 

Once Tony landed, Peter slid out of his hold and took a few unsteady steps towards the building. He gazed up at the sprawling structure almost reverently, mouth hanging open. His right hand grasped his left wrist tightly, rubbing the skin there in rough circles - a nervous tell? Tony stored the information away for later. For now, he observed the kid, a strange feeling in his chest that he couldn’t quite describe as Peter simply took in the enormity of the complex in front of him. It took a while for Tony to figure out why the image stirred things in him. This was the famed Stark Industries headquarters, and only one man was left to show for it, only one child left to admire it. That feeling in his chest? At least a part of it Tony recognised now as bitterness. This was what his life had been reduced to. Another part though, standing at complete odds, was more positive, so much more positive - a tentative, hesitant feeling of hope, albeit with a large, truckload of fear weighing it down.

 

Tony knew he should take off the suit now. He just had to reach up and do it. Except his lips and throat were dry again and the silence was starting to stifle him. He felt an overwhelming urge to drown himself in a bottle of scotch. So he turned to one of his best skills - procrastination.

 

“Where are you from?”

 

Peter whirled around, as if caught red-handed in some act he wasn’t supposed to do. 

 

“Q-queens, New Y-york.”

 

“Hm. A long distance away from upstate.”

 

Peter flushed. “I saw you. Last week. At the Oscorp facility. Well, heard you." Peter was rubbing his wrist harder. Tony's eyes flickered to it. In his suit, the boy couldn't tell where he was looking. "Then I saw you flying off and that’s when I realised that you....Iron Man, was still alive. So I came here.”

 

He held up his arms, gesturing at the complex behind him. Tony took a quick few seconds to appraise him, now that they were in the safety of the Compound grounds. The kid was dressed in an old tee shirt - something about "sodium funny", _god_ - and his jeans were ripped in parts. His brown hair was unkempt and choppily cut, suggesting that he had gone at it by himself recently. His cheekbones jutted out too prominently, his arms a little too bony. His backpack straps were frayed, and the shoes on shaky, shuffling feet were worn. 

 

“You walked here?”

 

“Y-yeah. Tried to drive part of the way. But the roads were littered with zombies so I had to leave in places.”

 

“How old are you?”

 

“Sixteen.”

 

"Shouldn't be driving without a licence."

 

Peter scoffed, but said nothing, only eyeing Tony nervously after no new questions followed. They stood there in silence for a minute - Peter, fidgety and unsure, and Tony, taciturn and observing. He knew he was delaying the inevitable. He couldn’t hide forever.

 

 _Don't kill me_. He thought wryly, almost bitterly, as he tapped his finger on the centre chest piece. The nanobots instantly began to retract. Peter eyes darted everywhere, to Tony’s arms and hands and legs, trying to keep up with the rapid procession of bots that clicked over one another as they shot towards the chest piece. Then they flew to his face and the rest of the suit was forgotten. Peter stared at Tony, and the wide-eyed fascination from just a second ago was replaced with...sadness. 

 

“That bad?” Tony joked, but his voice came out too flat. He felt strangely self-conscious about it now that it wasn’t filtered through the suit’s mechanical soundbox.

 

The kid floundered at his words. “No! No, no, Mr. Stark, that’s not it. You look great! I mean, I just.”

 

“Just a joke, kid.” Tony cut him off with a raised hand, feeling both amused and mildly exasperated. “Let’s just take you inside and feed you, hm?”

 

Peter nodded quickly. His eyes were looking watery again.

 

“Thank you.”

 

+++

 

The boy ate ravenously. He had finished two legs of chicken, one frozen pizza and a can of sardines in the past 30 minutes, and was now slurping through a bowl of mushroom soup . Tony watched him in dismay and disbelief. Did teenagers eat this much? He hadn’t really dealt with starving teenagers before so he didn't know. 

 

It was partially his fault. The kid had politely shook his head when Tony asked him, after the chicken had been eaten to the bone, whether he was still hungry. Tony could be dense, but he wasn’t completely blind - he could see that the kid was just trying to be courteous. So he had, on his own accord, dug through his huge freezer for the pizza. After that, it was a domino effect, and whatever Tony put out on the counter for the kid, went right into the kid’s stomach.

 

“Damn, kid, when was the last time you ate?” Tony asked, feeling a little nauseous just watching the kid wolf down the soup.

 

Peter stopped short, spoon dripping soup halfway to his mouth. Guilt and mild panic settled on his features. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark! I just...oh god, I’ve been eating my way through your pantry.”

 

“Don’t worry.” Tony said. _God, Mr. Stark?_ He needed to have a chat with the kid about that. “We can go grocery-looting soon. Just…you always eat this much?”

 

“No! Well, I eat more than most people, but I ration myself, I swear! I just haven’t eaten for the past two days.”

 

“You really ramble.”

 

Peter’s mouth snapped shut.

 

“It’s okay.” Tony said. “You can speak, I don’t mind.”

 

The next words were unspoken, but Tony had a feeling the kid knew what he meant to say - that he didn’t mind having _someone_ talking to him. Peter had found out that F.R.I.D.A.Y. was just an AI pretty quick, and the disappointment on the kid’s face at the discovery had made Tony’s heart ache.

 

It _was_ nice though, even if mildly unnerving. Having someone sitting at the bar counter, in the same room as him, talking to him, it made him feel normal again. Hell, even the clink of the utensils against the porcelain plates lifted Tony’s spirits. Solitude had become such a routine part of his life that it wasn’t until now that he realised he had missed - so fucking missed - companionship. Back in the day, Tony didn’t have a lot of friends, sure, but he was constantly surrounded by people. He had to practically hole himself up in the lab to escape the dozens of people that were constantly milling around him. If he could turn back time, he would take them all out for drinks, thank them for sticking with him, give them each a raise just for being there.

 

Now, all he had was this kid in his kitchen, inhaling a bowl of mushroom soup at 3 in the morning.

 

“Tell me your story, kid.” Tony said, needing to fill up the silence.

 

The question seemed to make Peter uneasy. “Which part?”

 

“Any part. Whatever you wanna tell me.”

 

Peter bit his lip. Tony could almost see him sorting through his memories, choosing which ones were safe to tell, which ones he would rather forget and keep locked away. 

 

“I, er, lived in Queens. I was with my- my Aunt May when all the things happened.” Peter had stopped drinking, and was stirring his spoon around tepidly, as if he had lost his appetite. “She feel sick real quick. I had to live with my friend, Ned, after that.” Peter’s eyes glazed over. “Ned went soon after that too.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Peter shrugged. “There wasn’t anything I could do about it.”

 

The words were said casually enough, but there was a tightness in his voice that tipped Tony off to the serious survivor’s guilt going on beneath the surface. Tony would know - he was practically the living embodiment of survivor’s guilt.

 

“So you’ve been alone since then?”

 

“I found people. We banded together, lived where we could, there was no shortage of space in New York City.”

 

“Yeah, and no shortage of monster-zombie-things.”

 

“The CDC did a pretty good job of disposing of everyone who passed away.” Peter said. He was now intently pulling at a scab on his left hand. “It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, but...the others...they, er." Peter pulled the scab off. "They weren’t so lucky.”

 

Okay, very serious survivor’s guilt. Tony needed a change of topic, quick.

 

“That scab, any injuries I need to be worried about?”

 

“Oh, um, not really. This will heal within a few hours. It’s only a scratch.”

 

“Fine, we can leave medical for later.” Tony said. “You need a change of clothes though. Let’s get you washed up, you probably stink.”

 

“I’ll wash the dishes.” Peter said, sliding off his stool and gathering up the plates on the counter. He paused when he caught Tony staring at him with an eyebrow raised. 

 

“Er...shouldn’t I?”

 

“Nah, just happy I got a kid that does his chores. Seems I did make the right choice bringing you in.”

 

It took a few moments, in which a range of emotions passed over the kid’s face, but it ended with a small smile. The first of the night.

 

Tony decided he liked that look.

 

+++

 

Tony shut himself in the lab again once the kid was sent off to bed. He had haphazardly tossed some old clothes of his, a bedsheet and a blanket onto the bed in one of the many guest quarters in the compound- which was a safe distance from Tony’s own bedroom -, given the kid quick directions to the kitchen and toilet, and then retreated back to his safe zone.

 

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., monitor the kid. Notify me if anything is out of the ordinary.”

 

“Yes, boss.” A pause, almost a human hesitation. “This will require me to consume energy during the duration of monitoring. Please confirm your instructions.”

 

“Confirmed.” Tony said. He hadn’t installed any cameras in the guestrooms, because that would just be creepy and probably illegal, but now he half-wished he had.

 

Because as much as he wanted to forget it, the 87.52% hung in his mind. Sure, F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s scans could be off, and she had laid dormant for the better part of the past year, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. was _his_ creation, and Tony knew his own systems. They wouldn’t be wrong. Plus, he had seen the kid's reaction earlier that day, that stiffening of the body at F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice. 

 

He would need to take the kid’s blood. That would help clear the mystery. That wasn’t the difficult part. The difficult part was deciding how he would react.

 

_He's not human. He's not fully human. Those things outside aren't human and this kid isn't either._

 

 _What if the kid isn't human?_ Another part of his brain supplied.  _Heightened hearing, probably heightened senses, definitely some heightened appetite. He doesn’t look like he could hurt a fly._

 

Tony had read the papers. The rumoured studies on human experimentation and serums and things that had made him feel nauseous, even after all the horrors he had been through and seen in Afghanistan. It wasn't possible though. That was all in the past, dead with HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. and the fabled super soldiers that Tony had read about as a kid, messing around in Howard's study when he wasn't around. Besides, no one had ever confirmed those rumours. It was like conspiracies of how mankind had never landed on the moon - stupid and fake, and if Pepper or Rhodes were here, they would roll their eyes at Tony and tell him to stop fucking agonising over it. This wasn’t the time to think about it, anyway.

 

Except it was, because one floor below him was what could be an inhuman - someone who could pin Tony down with one hand and rip into his throat with the other, just like those super soldiers. Because Tony Stark may be Iron Man with the suit, but without the suit he was - _ge_ _nius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist_ \- just a human.

 

Tony pulled up the Oscorp technology he had been working on earlier. He needed to get some energy out of this thing. It was pulsing with some dormant radiation, Tony could feel it. He just needed to get it to work, that’s all.

 

He just needed to get the goddamn thing to work.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make me very happy!! I am all too happy to talk with you guys. 
> 
> Also, I'm used to British English. But Tony and Peter are American. I should probably spell everything American, but it feels too weird. I'm forcing myself to use feet rather than metres though. @_@


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We need to get you better clothes. You look pathetic."
> 
> "That bad?"
> 
> It took a moment to register that this was a semi-joke. Tony grinned. 
> 
> “Chores and the hope of good wit. We’ll make a man out of you yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been so busy this past week! Hope you like this chapter! Thanks so much for the lovely comments. 
> 
> Something I should have clarified at the end of the last chapter - clearly, this is not canon-compliant. Superhumans like Steve, Bucky etc. don't exist in this world, or at least, they aren't supposed to. Hence Tony freaking out. Is that justified when he flies around in a nano-suit? Well, someone better tell him it isn't. ;)

 

Tony didn’t sleep that night. Plus, he may or may not have chugged a bottle of scotch down at some point. It was probably a bad idea.

 

“Peter has woken up.” F.R.I.D.A.Y. informed him, her voice sending a sharp pain flashing through his head.

 

Okay, definitely a bad idea.

 

Tony quickly took a shower, shaved for the first time in weeks (wow, no wonder he had gotten that look of utter pity from the kid, his beard looked terrible) and threw some new clothes on, because he couldn’t be looking worse than a kid that had walked all the way to upstate New York from Queens. He even went through his stash of colognes, laying unused at the bottom of his drawer, and chose a smell that he felt represented suave-put-together-Tony-Stark. The clock read 7.47 am. Yeah, never too early for cologne. Sure, he was gussying himself up for a 16-year-old kid, but he could at least try to look presentable for the person who might be the second-last human on Earth.

 

Around the time he switched out his third shirt, Tony had to admit that he was delaying meeting the kid. Because meeting the kid meant having to confront that bloody number again, and having to think about the blood tests, and what to do after, and if it would change anything at all. Tony thought, for a wild moment, that it would be better if the kid had never shown up after all. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with this dilemma.

 

Then he looked at the empty king-sized bed in the room and felt a wave of shame. He thought of the long days spent flying around the state, dialing different numbers around the world and sending out, in this day and age, radio transmissions. He thought of the countless times he had called Rhodey, begging his friend to pick up, to come home and retrieve Tony.

 

There was a prickle of pain in his eyes. He was not going to fucking cry.

 

It wasn’t until F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke again - “Peter is roaming the Compound, boss. He appears to be looking for you.” - that Tony finally made a move. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt before he left the room.

 

+++

 

Despite F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s message that Peter had been looking for him, Tony found the kid in the kitchen, rifling through the cabinet drawers, looking for something to eat. He didn't appear to notice Tony, or at least pretended not to. He took out a box of cereal, a frown on his face. 

 

The scene brought Tony to a standstill. For the briefest of moments, his brain conjured an agonisingly vivid memory of Pepper, searching through the kitchen drawers for her cereal. _Where did you move it again, Tony? Can’t you just put it back in the same place? It’s not that difficult_. Tony swore he could hear her voice in his head. Gentle, exasperated, almost amused and achingly patient. He was always misplacing things. He would grab snacks in the middle of the night during his lab sessions and then toss them in a random cabinet afterwards. He should have just placed it back in the correct drawer. It wasn’t that hard.

 

He could have just made that little bit of an effort for her.

 

"Mr. Stark?"

 

This voice wasn't Pepper's. Or Rhodey's. Or Happy's.

 

The kid in his kitchen was foreign, alien. Someone who had shown up on his doorstep when no one was supposed to show up. Uninvited.

 

Tony vaguely recognised the onset of a panic attack. He also felt an irrational, overpowering need to bark at the kid, yell at him to get out his kitchen.

 

He should really have slept last night.

 

“Mr. Stark, you there?”

 

The kid was looking at him nervously. Tony pitied him. One night into the Compound and he was about to witness Tony Stark having a meltdown. What was the point of showering and shaving and putting on cologne and combing his hair, if it was only going to lead to him gasping for breath in the middle of his kitchen while he was consumed by the memories of his dead loved ones?  

 

“You...wanna come sit?”

 

One hand was rubbing his wrist again and his eyes kept flickering down to Tony’s arc reactor - was he worried that Tony would engage the suit?

 

“Y-you look pale.”

 

_That might be because I haven’t stepped out into the sunlight in two weeks but hey I’m fine._

 

“You, er, want some cookies?” The kid said, clearly changing tactics. He held up a box - it wasn't cereal. “I used to eat this all the time and they are really good. Not a great thing if you aren’t a fan of chocolate but I mean, everyone likes chocolate, right? I think. I mean, I’ve been searching for this particular box for days but I guess you must have snatched up everything in the state of New York cos, wow, they are not easy to find.”

 

That, of all things, shook Tony out of his frozen reverie. He nearly laughed in disbelief as the kid rattled on. He was having a mental breakdown here and the kid was rambling about his favourite brand of Oreo cookies.

 

Peter paused, before he chuckled hesitantly, clearly unsure how he should react. “Yeah, that’s, er, that’s silly. I mean, who does that right?”

 

Yeah, who does talk about cookies to man on the brink of a panic attack? It seemed to work though, because the lead in Tony's brain was cracked and he finally felt like he could _do_ something. Tony closed his eyes - just like Rhodey had taught him - shutting out the image of Peter and Pepper and everything around him, drawing in a deep breath and trying to slow his racing heart. 

 

He just needed to focus on his breathing. Just needed to breathe in and out.

 

In and out. 

 

_In and out._

 

_Just like that, Tones._

 

When he opened his eyes, Peter didn't even try to hide the breath of relief. 

 

“Shut up, kid.” Tony said, without any bite, still trying to focus on his breathing. 

 

The kid looked stricken. “Sorry! I didn't mean to do that. Please don't be offended. It’s just that you looked like you were going to - actually, I should just-”

 

“Shut up, yeah.” Tony said wryly, but his lips were tugging upwards in a smile he couldn’t hold back. The kid breathed another sigh of relief that Tony wasn’t actually mad. Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, drawing in a few more deep breaths before he trusted himself to talk further. “Look kid, I just haven’t slept in probably 48 hours, and the alcohol is still in here-” He gestured at his head. “So let me finish my cup of coffee before you continue on with whatever you want? Cool?”

 

“Uh, I'm not sure coffee is a good-” One look from Tony and the kid shut up again. "I mean, cool!"

 

Tony clapped him on the shoulder as he walked past him to the coffee maker. Thankfully, his panic attack did seem to be retreating. 

 

For now.

 

“So, when did you get up?” Tony said casually, after a mug of coffee was snug in his hands. God, that felt good, having something warm in his stomach. It settled his frazzled nerves. He strolled over to the bar counter where the kid was seated. “Oh and you do know we have a dining room right? And a living room? You can go there if you want?”

 

“Er…I’m good with anything, Mr. Stark.”

 

“Yeah okay, don’t get side-tracked, when did you get up?”

 

The kid looked baffled, and Tony sort of registered that he just flipped everything around there, but he ploughed on anyway. “Come on, we don’t have all day.”

 

“Just...about an hour ago I think? I just…” Peter didn’t meet Tony’s eyes. “Y’know, just laid around before I came here.”

 

Huh. The kid was gonna lie. Tony considered telling him that he monitored the entire place, so he may as well come clean that he had been roaming, but decided to hold back that piece of information. Distrust and paranoia were dangerous - _thank you Walking Dead_ \- but Tony felt justified. He needed time to know the kid a little better, that was all.

 

As he sipped on his coffee, Tony took the opportunity to study the kid, both to size the kid up and to distract himself from the knot of nerves in his stomach. The kid looked much better cleaned up. His eye bags didn’t seem quite as bad and his hair didn’t look disastrous anymore, though the odd ends still stuck out here and there. The worst part of his get-up was his clothes. Tony was bigger than him and it showed. The black tee hung off his small frame, making him look smaller than he actually was, and the sweatpants were clearly staying on only by virtue of the drawstrings.

 

Tony didn’t realise he was staring, not until the kid shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

 

“Um..”

 

Fuck. That probably felt inappropriate to the kid. Now he felt dirty.

 

“Shit, sorry. I just think we need to get you better clothes. You look pathetic.”

 

The kid looked a little hurt. “That bad?”

 

It took a moment to register that this was a semi-joke. Tony grinned.

 

“Does chores and has hope of good wit. We’ll make a man out of you yet.”

 

Another small smile. Funny, just a few minutes ago, Tony had been contemplating screaming the kid out of his house, and now he felt like he had scored a small victory. It was nice, bantering, it seemed to loosen his nerves more than the coffee did. Tony had forgotten just how much of a snarky, irritating son of a bitch he loved to be when he had actual people to talk to.

 

“Are you...really okay, though?” The kid asked hesitantly. “You look tired.”

 

Okay, that happy conversation lasted for all of two seconds. Tony pointedly turned away from the kid, raising his mug to his lips to delay having to answer. It was obvious as hell but he needed the kid to know that questions about Tony Stark were off-limits. Probably - _definitely -_ a little unfair, given that Tony was basically CCTV-ing the kid, about to run blood tests on him and was nowhere near the end of interrogating him, but Tony was the host. He was allowed to do these things. He was permitting a stranger into his private space so he was permitted to do some due diligence.

 

“Mr. Stark?”

 

Right, so he wasn’t alone anymore. Monologues in his head during actual conversations could be weird.

 

“I’m peachy.” Tony said. “You?”

 

“Oh, I’m good. Uhhh...your beds are really comfortable.” Tony had to bite back a snort. This kid was too earnest for his own good. Peter frowned, as if realising that he had allowed the conversation to swing back to his court too quickly. After a small sigh, it seemed he decided to just drop the subject. “So, um, what do you usually do around here?”

 

_Wallow in my misery. Talk in my head. Drink copious amounts of alcohol and have panic attacks the morning after._

 

“I tinker in my lab.” Tony replied. “Clear the perimeter defences of zombie guts and brains every few days. Today is spring-cleaning day, so gotta get to that. Make supply runs every now and then, but really, I have a shitload of stuff sitting around already.”

 

Peter hung onto his every word. 

 

“I can help! Um, you know. With anything. I’m not a free-loader! I can help you.”

 

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Sure, kid, I wasn’t gonna accuse you of being one.”

 

Peter blushed, turning his attention back to his Oreos. He had already wolfed down more than half the entire box. His fingers brushed over his wrist every now and then. Tony bit back any comments, but his stomach was still twisting in weird knots and after thirty seconds of the kid airbrushing his wrists, Tony couldn’t contain his curiosity anymore.

 

“You like your wrists a lot, huh?” He said lightly, as he poured himself more coffee. It was a terrible line but he was recovering from a panic attack and 48 hours of no sleep, he was allowed some leeway. 

 

"What? No! I just, it’s just. A nervous habit that’s all.”

 

“I can tell.”

 

Peter winced. There was something beneath the surface there that he wasn’t telling Tony. He thought about the freeloading comment, the constant apologies and general meekness, and the people that Peter had hung out with before. He wondered if anything had happened. A kid like that, alone - he might not fare so well. Tony felt uneasy as his thoughts strayed to uglier territory. The kid didn’t seem afraid of Tony, but he was Iron Man.

 

“You sure you don’t have injuries?”

 

“No, I’m fine, good." The kid insisted. "No need for a check-up.” He added, almost awkwardly. 

 

It would have been easy to give the kid an out there. Tony could just continue his own merry life shutting both eyes, and the kid could continue keeping whatever secrets he wanted. It wasn’t Tony’s business anyway. But then the studies on human experimentation came back, and they morphed into mindless zombies, and Tony knew he had to know. He had to find out what the 12.48% was or else he might go insane with paranoia.

 

“I still need to run medical.” Tony said, keeping his voice as casual as possible. “Sorry, protocol.”

 

It took a few seconds, but Peter finally nodded stiffly. He was too easy to read. He was definitely hiding something.

 

Tony’s heart began to pick up pace again under the arc reactor, just a little.

 

The kid eyes flickered to his chest.

 

That's when Tony was hit with a sudden realisation.

 

He thought the kid had been looking at his arc reactor earlier - he had been confused why the kid would worry about Tony activating his suit - but that wasn’t it at all.

 

_He can hear my heartbeat._

 

+++

 

Tony led Peter to the third floor laboratory after breakfast. He had managed to hold his shit together through his three mugs of coffee, although judging from the skeptical glances that the kid kept giving him, he was probably looking the worse for wear. The conversation between them had been stilted, Tony too distracted by the thought of the kid being able to hear his heartbeat to say much. Sure, his brain had talked to itself in circles about the kid’s potential super-abilities, but all he had then was F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s scan results and the one indication that the kid had her through the suit. Now though, _now_ , Tony was almost sure that the kid had abilities. 

 

On his part, the kid seemed to know he had messed up. He barely touched the remaining Oreos and looked like he wanted to bolt from the place.

 

It was a relief to finally reach the lab section of the Compound. It gave Tony something to talk about.

 

“Here.” Tony said, leading Peter to an elevator.

 

“The labs are all on the third floor?”

 

“There are more scattered throughout. I only use these ones now. Can’t waste energy powering the entire building.”

 

“How _do_ you power everything?”

 

“Arc reactor.”

 

That didn’t need more explanation. It was Stark Industries’ patented arc reactor that revolutionised the energy industry after all. It hadn’t quite reached the stage of mass consumer production, but a fair bit of buildings in major cities ran at least partially on some form of the reactor - well, had run.

 

“The reactors were really useful back in town.” Peter said, as they entered the elevator. He sounded glad to have something to speak about, grabbing it and running with it, even if his brows were furrowed. “When the power grid started to fail, we pretty much huddled in the reactor-run buildings cos they were the only ones with power. The water and all were running in some too, so I guess they were self-sufficient or something. It was a life-saver. Even Ors-” Peter stopped short as Tony led him through the doorway that opened out in the labs. His eyes looked like they would pop right out of their sockets. “Oh my god…”

 

Despite the tension between the two of them, Tony couldn’t help the pride and satisfaction that welled up at Peter’s reaction. It never did get old, the wide-mouthed astonishment that visitors to Tony’s labs always displayed. Even now, the labs looked no less impressive, filled to the brim with robots, Iron Man suits, and prototype energy reactors. The latter was the focus of Tony’s research now. He had full access to the labs of competitors after the plague swept everyone away, and there were a surprising number of weird tech hidden in them. Some of it looked like they came from another planet. One of Tony’s more outlandish experiments was to try creating an energy source from the zombie’s blood - those things ran on autopilot and didn’t seem to need traditional combustion in their blood cells for life. If he could somehow replicate that model in a generator, it could mean never having to worry about running out of electricity ever again.

 

At least until his death. Tony gave himself a decade before he died of liver failure, if the zombies didn’t get to him first.

 

The kid was currently running his fingers over the glass partitions separating the corridor from the individual labs. A small smile was on his face.

 

“You like science?” Tony asked, remembering the kid’s tee shirt the previous night.

 

Peter nodded, his smile growing, the most enthusiastic he had looked since he first appeared. “Biology, chemistry, physics. I loved it. I was in a STEM school, you know? Big on science and math. We got to work in the labs a lot and Ned and I would always stay back to just fiddle around with stuff. It was great.”

 

Tony paused. He was still apprehensive of the kid, but there was a doe-eyed look to him right that tugged at Tony’s heart-strings. He had wanted a son before - before everything. He had even asked Pepper for children, had dreamed of a boy who ran through his labs and who Tony would give all the things Howard never did. 

 

“Well, you can take a look at these later then.” Tony said before he could help it, tilting his chin towards the labs. Peter’s eyes practically shone.

 

“Oh my god, really?? I would love that!”

 

Tony forced himself not to look away, forced himself to smile. “Yeah, sure. I’ll make medical quick. Just need to take your blood and make sure you aren’t dying of any injuries.”

 

The smile faltered for just half a second before plastering itself back on Peter’s face.

 

“Yeah, yeah. Of course.”

 

Tony led him to one of the smaller labs off the main hallway. Peter sat down hesitantly on one of the chairs, while Tony busied himself with getting the apparatus ready. He fiddled more than he needed to with the syringes, under the pretext of searching for the correct needle size. The truth was...he wasn’t looking forward to the truth. He didn’t want to be confronted with the confirmation that there was a genetically-enhanced human being in this world, that human experimentation had somehow yielded results, even if that human looked and acted like he would rather punch himself than kill a fly. Because that upset the order of things too much, because being not 100% human pushed Peter into the category of being non-human, and well, there were some motherfucking terrifying non-humans currently stalking the Earth. Life as Tony Stark had known it had been turned upside down from the moment _zombies_ became a thing of reality rather than someone’s overactive imagination in horror stories, and he really, _really_ could not add mutants to that list of _shit that cannot be real_ right now.

 

He wanted to turn back time just a little and stay in that conversation from a minute ago, pretend that was all they ever were and would be - a man and a boy who looked like Tony could give him the world. 

 

But Peter was currently waiting behind him, and Tony had brought them along too far to turn back now.

 

 _Ask him_. A voice said in his head, sounding too much like Rhodey’s. _Just ask him if he can hear your heartbeat._

 

Tony wanted to. He had thought about it again and again over the night, the alcohol lowering his inhibitions, and more than a few times he had nearly stumbled towards the bedroom where Peter slept, ready to shake the boy awake and ask if he had imagined Peter’s reaction to F.R.I.D.A.Y., ready to just get it over and done with. But if there was one thing that Tony was acutely aware of, it was that he was a coward when it came to dealing with other people. Facts, figures and scientific results, he could deal with - taking the kid’s blood and running tests on it was infinitely easier than having to actually talk about it, because Tony did not trust himself to talk to anyone on things that actually mattered.

 

Behind him, Peter had begun to fidget nervously.

 

“Er...you okay there, Mr. Stark?”

 

“Peachy.” Tony murmured again. He grabbed the tray of test tubes and syringes before he could change his mind and turned towards Peter. “Hope you aren’t scared of needles or blood.”

 

Peter shook his head, hesitating just a second before holding out his arm.

 

Tony set the tray down. Extracted the needle from its sealed package, inserted it into the syringe. Wrapped the straps around Peter’s upper arm and gave him a rubber ball to flex.

 

This was it.

 

He felt along the crook of Peter’s arm for the vein.

 

It seemed to pulse beneath Tony’s fingers.

 

87.52%.

 

He inserted the needle.

 

It sunk in smoothly into the unblemished skin. Funny how the kid had no bruises or cuts on him. The scab was healed. 

 

Tony pulled on the plunger.

 

The blood came rushing out, bright red in the harsh glow of the lab’s fluorescent lights.

 

This was it.

 

Tony felt Peter’s eyes on him. When he looked up, he thought for a wild moment that they appeared red.

 

Like the zombies.

 

Then the moment passed and the soft brown of Peter’s eyes stared back into his own.

 

“Are you okay, Mr. Stark?” Peter asked. His voice sounded too smooth, too unnatural. He had been asking that a lot today. 

 

“Y-yeah.” Tony said, aware that this was the first time he had stuttered in front of the kid.

 

Peter tilted his head, a curious expression on his face.

 

“Okay.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO...a couple of things. 
> 
> (1) I have had anxiety/panic attacks before. It sometimes takes the form of an inability to do ANYTHING. Like I will just sit there unable to move, or try forcing myself to move only to sit down somewhere else 5 mins later, again, unable to move. Talking to others usually doesn't break me out of the attack, it just causes me to burst out in tears uncontrollably. But hey, let's have Tony react differently to Peter, okay? :P 
> 
> (2) Someone also asked if I planned to do a chapter from Peter's POV, as that might give the story more depth. It definitely would! As I write these, I always imagine Peter's thoughts as well because that gives the other side of the story. However, I really want to play around with the idea of the unreliable narrator. Peter's actions are all filtered through Tony's lens and I feel like that lends the story more tension. Much much further down the road, if I stick to my plan, I will leave Tony's POV. However, for the foreseeable future, this will be from Tony's POV. 
> 
> As always, I love comments! Talk with me, give me constructive criticism, point out mistakes I made! If you are interested, my tumblr is @alwaysmyoriginalsin.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the kid had been an adult, Tony could have shoved the responsibility of speaking about the superpowers to him. As it was, Tony was the adult in the relationship, and he was very, very far from an actual, operational adult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good lord, these are getting long, but I really wanted to build the world outside of the Compound well. I had this chapter ready since Monday but I spent the whole week tweaking it. 
> 
> Also, this fic should have an estimated 18 chapters or so, but outlines and actual chapters always end up differing for me :/ It should be around that number though. Also, I took out the chapter names because I wasn't feeling them. It shall be a boring "Chapter __" from now on.

 

It was, thankfully, a cool day.

 

Tony usually carried out his spring-cleaning duties in the evenings or early mornings, to avoid the hot afternoon sun, but the morning was behind him and he couldn’t bear the prospect of being shut within the same four walls as the kid while F.R.I.D.A.Y. ran the blood tests. He needed a distraction, an escape.

 

The tension between them was sky-high after the medical check-up. After extracting the kid’s blood and sending it off for the lab analysers to do their magic, Tony had checked him over for any injuries. True to the kid's word, there were none. But Tony hadn't quite expected how...injury-less the kid would be. Aside from a few mottled bruises here and there that were already fading, there were barely any scars on him. A quick scan showed evidence of a couple of broken ribs from years ago and that was it. There was just no way the kid could have survived the past year so cleanly.

 

The scan also showed that the kid’s muscles were remarkably well-developed for someone so clearly malnourished. It could be attributed to exercise - the kid had to fend off zombies by himself after all, so he was bound to have muscle on him - but this went beyond that. Suddenly, Tony's alcohol-induced fears of the kid ripping his throat out didn't seem so far-fetched. 

 

Without a full scan though, it was impossible to draw a definite conclusion. Peter was getting agitated, his knees bouncing non-stop, and Tony was spooked enough already. The sterile walls of the medical lab were conjuring up disturbing images of children being dissected like science experiments. So, he practically ran out of the building and out into the open where the air didn’t quite suffocate him as much.

 

Tony should have known that his life, even at this stage of fucked-up-ness, would never be smooth-sailing. It should have been expected. From his troubled childhood of distant parents, drunken college years soaked through with booze, drugs and daddy issues, to an adulthood lost to wild parties, hangovers and blotchy alcohol-ridden memories, only for everything to come grinding to a halt with torture, a hole in his chest and a mortifying revelation that he was responsible for destroying the lives of millions, Tony Stark’s life had been a whirlwind of privileged pandemonium. So, of course he would have been gifted with another soul on this lonely planet, and of course it couldn’t be a normal, functioning person. Maybe a seasoned, high-functioning soldier? A scientific genius? Hey, he would even have settled for a sexy, brainless pornstar at this point, because at least then he might have lost himself in the sex. But nope, it had to be an enhanced child _._

 

Now, the enhanced part, Tony could fathom. Sure, it freaked him out, but it made sense. People who survived this long in a zombie apocalypse had to have something special. Tony Stark flew around the sky in a metal case, Peter...had super-hearing abilities and was potentially a human lab rat. Cool. Except said super-hearing abilities were superimposed on a child and honestly, Tony didn’t know whether to be terrified or protective of the kid that was following him around miserably. He reminded Tony of a pathetic puppy he had once watched in a movie, with droopy ears and even droopier eyes, that had followed around the man that abused it.

 

If the kid had been an adult, Tony could have shoved the responsibility of speaking about the superpowers to him. As it was, Tony was the adult in the relationship, and he was very, very far from an actual, operational adult. Pepper had once cruelly told him that his emotional maturity had stalled at eighteen. Rhodey had very helpfully chipped in to say the number was closer to fourteen. 

 

“What’s your last name, kid?” Tony asked, as he walked out onto the grounds, a long hunting knife in his hands. He had the nanobot suit on - he hadn’t taken it off since he first headed out to meet the kid - and the suit was fully capable of conjuring up a knife for him, but he wanted to preserve energy. Never knew when the arc reactor would run out of juice like the ones in the basement. Tony had had more than one nightmare where it had gone and done just that while Tony was up in the sky, and he had fallen dead-weight to the ground, screaming and scrambling at terminal velocity even as part of him welcomed the sweet release of death.

 

“M-mine? Wait, of course me.” Tony rolled his eyes. _God, why was he scared of this kid again? Oh yeah, superpowers. Lab experiment._ “Parker. Peter Parker.”

 

“Okay, Parker Peter Parker, I’m about to go on cleaning duty so you can wait around here. I don’t know, play ball or something.”

 

A pause. Tony could already sense the frown.

 

“I can help.”

 

“Sure.”

 

“I said I would help. You said I could help.”

 

“Wow, now you’re chatty.”

 

Irritating a superhuman wasn’t a smart thing to do, was it? Tony always had the worse coping mechanisms.

 

An expansive lawn led to the western wall where the zombie wave had hit the the night before. Half the field was used for growing food - potatoes, lettuces, cucumbers, carrots, anything really, that could be planted and grown, he even had some (dying) apple trees - but the other half was left bare. The grass was getting a little long, maybe he would get the kid to mow it. He could weed the farm while he was at it too. Might as well get someone else to do the hard labour, and wasn’t that basically what teenagers were for? Physically enhanced teenagers in particular. He glanced back. Said teenager was glaring at him.

 

“I survived out there for months. Alone. I can handle stabbing zombies impaled on your sticks or blown to pieces or whatever you did to them out there.”

 

God, pissy teenagers always sounded the same.

 

“I’m not weak.”

 

_No, I don’t think you are. I think you might be able to rip me to shreds if you want._

 

_Stop it, Tones. Listen to the kid._

 

When had he begun to hear Rhodey’s voice again so much? It felt like being stabbed in the gut every time it happened.

 

“Fine. How do you do it?”

 

“How do I do what?”

 

“Bake a cake. Lord, kill the brainless fuckers impaled on my sticks, genius.” Tony winced. He didn’t have to be that harsh. But it only seemed to embolden the kid.

 

“Stab them through the brain.” Peter replied confidently, as if he was answering a question in class. “Make sure you don’t get scratched or bitten, incapacitate them if you have to, but always make sure you go for the brain.”

 

Tony bit the inside of his cheek.

 

“I don’t get it. You said I-”

 

“Jesus, yes, sure kid, you can help.”

 

Tony could feel the glare burning a hole in his back as he started walking again.

 

The walls surrounding the Compound were thirty-feet-high reinforced concrete. They weren't always that high. He had had them built taller, thicker, after the plague intensified and reports poured in of swarms of brain-eating monsters making their way across the country. _Tony Stark holes himself up in the Stark Industries Compound - a showcase of wealth even at the end of the world_ , the headlines had blared. Fucking media still found a way to bring him down when the fucking apocalypse had descended on the world, never mind that he had made offers to all Stark Industries employees to bring their families over to the Compound. Never mind that it was his R&D department that had raced against the clock to find a cure, a vaccine, anything that would work against the mysterious disease that had every doctor, scientist and historian in the world dumbfounded. There was just no explanation for the speed with which the disease spread, the degeneration of the mental faculties of contaminated subjects, the regeneration of specific motor neurons in the brain that allowed the dead to reanimate and even more specific areas of the cerebral cortex that gave the dead enough sentience to attack human beings, but nothing more. In the end, the clock had run out. People had succumbed to the plague faster than any defensive drug could be developed. There was a section of the Compound dedicated to the graves of the people who had died while at the Compound - no bodies, because they had to play it safe and incinerate everyone.

 

God, it had been a nightmare.

 

Tony usually flew over the wall to get to the defenses outside, but Peter couldn’t do that - or could he - and plus, he needed something to stab with. Tony led him further down from where the explosions had occurred to the western gates. It was really a reinforced door built into the wall that would lead to another door that would lead to another door that opened to the outside world. It wasn’t something the Frankensteins could get through.

 

“I would fly up but I’m assuming you can’t.”

 

Peter sort of...moved his head listlessly. Tony couldn’t decide whether it was a nod or a shake of the head.

 

“Thanks.” He said after a few beats too long.

 

Could the kid actually fly or was he just too angry to speak? Tony preferred not to think about the answer. Instead, he grabbed a long dagger and a mask hanging to one side of the corridor, handing them to the kid. Peter eyed the tools warily before taking them.

 

“Okay, kid, stay close to me at all times. When we get to the forest, backs to each other, 360 degree visual at all times.”

 

“You don’t have to worry. I can hear them.”

 

A beat passed. Tony had to work extra hard to cover up his slack-jawed reaction, but he was sure the kid saw it, the kid whose expression was almost...defiant. His chin was held high and his eyes narrowed. Fucking hell.

 

 _Ask him. Ask him what he means._ Rhodey’s voice spoke in his head again, rational, calm. _He’s giving you the chance._

 

It occurred to him then that the kid had walked up to the Compound in complete darkness, knife in bag rather than in his hands.

 

_Ask him, Tony._

 

Peter was still glowering at him.

 

“Let’s head out.”

 

Tony ignored the look of disappointment that flashed across the kid’s face. They had some zombies to kill and Tony really, _really_ didn’t want to deal with thinking right now.

 

+++

 

_“Tony.”_

 

_“Oh come on, Pepper.”_

 

_“I’m warning you.”_

 

_“Just a little fanfare to get the people excited. You know happy employees are productive employees right?”_

 

_“And these happy, productive employees have been seeing the Compound getting constructed these past few months. They practically moved their stuff in already.”_

 

_“But we are relocating a bunch of them from Manhattan, where it was so close to their homes, to upstate New York, which is definitely not close to their homes. And most didn’t even complain. They got uprooted, Pepper, but they didn’t say a single word - okay, I heard the water cooler talks, maybe they did, a little bit, a lot bit, just a lot - but they did it, because they understood.”_

 

_Pepper was rolling her eyes the way she did when he was about to get his way._

 

_“They understood that the location of Stark Tower and Stark Industries in the city was drawing too much destructive villains to the area and that by moving out of a metropolis we were minimising loss of lives and destruction of property. They understood the greater good.”_

 

 _“I_ know _, Tony. Those are the corporate words_ I  _came up with."_

 

_“So let me give them a little fanfare. Something they can collectively bitch about and laugh at and bond over, because everyone can appreciate an ego-maniacal, narcissistic boss with a flair for theatrics.”_

 

_Pepper smiled at last, eyes crinkling at the sides in the way he loved so much. She threw an exasperated look over her shoulder at Rhodey, but his best friend simply shrugged his shoulders in response, as if to say, ‘don’t look at me, your problem’. Tony made a mental note to buy Rhodey a drink later, maybe a car too, or a house._

 

_She debated a few seconds before answering, but Tony knew he had won._

 

_“Okay, fine. You handle the press afterwards.”_

 

_Tony grinned. “Oh honey, I’ll put on the best show this side of Uncle Sam.”_

 

_He couldn’t quite justify the company funds that would be needed for this grand opening of the Compound, so he simply drew from his bottomless personal bank account for it. He wanted the whole shebang - fireworks, airshows, Mark 20s and 30s used as props to fly high in the air, and balloons, a whole fucking truckload of balloons because even adults loved balloons, so long as the little devils didn’t pop right in his ear. Never mind that fireworks during the day was a waste of fireworks, because really, he just wanted them there to tick it off the list. The airshows with pretty letters would cover up for that. The staff that were being relocated, and even ones that were staying behind in the New York office, converged on the road outside the Compound Gates on D-Day. Tony felt such a rush of pride and love for every single person there that he felt his heart would burst. These were the people that had stuck by him. He didn’t show it much, ran away from them half the time and always turned up for meetings late, if at all, but he loved them. He did. He would one day buy them all drinks and send personalised love letters to them, if he could just remember their names. James, that was Dean, and the girl was...Natalie? Natalia? Some Russian name. Pepper mentioned she had a new assistant._

 

_“You’re drunk, Tony.” Rhodey said, smirking, when Tony confessed how he felt to Rhodey._

 

_Huh, maybe he was. That explained the mildly-annoyed-looking Happy at his side and the slightly-pissed-off-looking Pepper a dozen feet away. She made some motion at him, which included a hand across the neck._

 

_“You think she’s saying ‘I love you’?” Tony asked Rhodey and Happy._

 

_Happy ignored him, Rhodey started sniggering._

 

_“Yes, Tones, I think that’s what she’s saying.”_

 

_By the time the holographic clock projected in the sky above showed 9.55 a.m. between the Marks holding ridiculous bunches of balloons and Pepper shoved him towards the front of the crowd, Tony was feeling positively ecstatic._

 

_“So, you are all here today to celebrate the opening of our most beloved palace, our wonder of architecture and planning and okay, so parts of it are predictable and glass structures? So cliche these days, I should have gone for ancient Greece structures like the Parthenon or Asian wonders like the Forbidden Palace or the Angkor Wat, but I didn’t want it to be cultural appropriation, you know? I have a lot to learn about that and I think we all need to have some workshops on that, remind me to put that on our company to-do list. But-but, okay Pepper, I know. I was saying, but really, this is our very own Taj Mahal of the Stark Industries, although I would very much like to be alive, so don’t murder me, thank you very much.”_

 

_His employees had begun to giggle. He was so drunk, but he was happy so what did it matter._

 

_“What I meant to say with that comparison - I’m not just rambling. The reason I chose that analogy, I think, actually I am making this up. It’s because I want to dedicate this wonderful beautiful behemoth of a beauty-” His words sounded weird there. “-to the most beloved love of my life.”_

 

_The crowd began to ooh._

 

_“Rhodes, this is for you.”_

 

_The oohs quickly turned to laughter, and even Pepper was trying to hide her smile. The cameras were clicking away._

 

_“But okay, jokes aside, and I know I am drunk but let me remind you that even as a drunk I am a highly-functioning genius, okay? The stuff you see in the air? Those Iron Man suits? All created while drunk. So I know what I’m doing. I know.”_

 

_This was it. The love letter to the people in front of him._

 

_“So I just…”_

 

_The cameras were on him and the clock was nearly at 10 a.m. Everyone was looking at him._

 

_“I just wanted to say…” Tony swallowed hard, feeling impossibly sober. “I dedicate this all to you.”_

 

_The gates behind him swung open and the fireworks went off._

 

_+++_

 

Tony’s heart skipped a few beats as the door swung open with a loud, rusty creak. The grounds outside were overgrown with weeds, ferns and grass, showing no hint of the landscaped lawns that previously adorned the area. The land fell outside of the Compound per se, but Tony had always made sure the surrounding areas to be kept perfectly manicured, because people would associate it with Stark Industries, and company image was just as important as its products and policies. It had to exude refinement and class, conjure up visions of the future, a beacon of technological and scientific advancement. Now, the whole place had fallen into disarray. The grass was nearly two feet tall and patches of scorched earth littered the area from where zombie hordes had triggered the perimeter defences.

 

The treelines were a little further down, so Tony had set up a few layers of defences right outside the walls. There were two rows of basic spears, metal rods with sharpened ends shoved into the ground at various angles to impale anything that walked into them. There were explosives buried in the ground - deactivated temporarily - then another row of spears. There were missile systems and automated machine guns in the walls that would finish the work a lot quicker, but these were linked to a dormant scanning system and would only trigger if the zombies managed to breach certain markers closer to the wall. After that one incident Tony couldn’t take any chances.

 

He repressed the memory. There was really no point thinking much about it. He had moved on, past the guilt and the shame, and he was putting all that negative energy into much more productive work, like getting the Oscorp tech to work.

 

The explosions had killed off most of the monsters, the reason why Tony felt comfortable heading out without a suit. There were a few impaled on the inner ring of spears, which was a little worrisome. It meant that the trenches had been overwhelmed and even the explosives hadn't been enough to take care of the rest. He walked up to the nearest zombie. Half the body and all the limbs had been blown off. The one remaining eyeball swivelled up to look at Tony as he strode over. He tried not to think about the fact that this...this thing used to be a human. A woman, from the remains of the dress clinging onto the mutilated body. Tony wondered how old she had been.

 

Bile rose up in his throat. He gripped the hunting knife tightly and quickly shoved it into the zombie’s rotting head. The knife slide in with a disgusting squelch, clean sharp metal slicing into greenish-grey, rotting skin. Dark-brown, decomposed brain matter oozed out of the wound and down the silver blade, getting caught in the clumps of hair remaining.

 

The woman - zombie - gave one last groan before falling limp against the spear.

 

Tony took a few moments to gather himself. The first one was always the hardest. After that, it just became work. Routine.

 

Behind him, Peter looked a little green.

 

“You’re gonna be okay?” Tony asked. “You can go back in.”

 

Peter shook his head quickly. “No! No, I just. I just need a moment. I’ve seen this stuff.”

 

He really was all right after that. The first kill was hesitant, and Tony saw the kid blinking back tears, but after that the both of them fell into a smooth routine. Stab the zombies in the head, slide their bodies off the spears, dump them in a pile to incinerate later. The kid clearly had experience. Tony had to remind himself that Peter was right. He had been scrounging around an empty New York city for months alone. Hell, he was probably way more self-sufficient than Tony was, cooped up in his palace with an AI that did all his work for him, walls that kept any danger away and a suit that allowed him to fly over most swarms of the undead. The only real interaction he had with these things was when he came out of the Compound like this every week or so to clean up the mess.

 

It was tiring work. Once they got to the traps in the forest, they were both sweating buckets. Tony had engaged the suit as soon as he crossed the treeline. He felt guilty that the kid was dressed in nothing but some loose-fitting sweatpants and a tee - god, he needed to think about whether he should armour the kid up - but Tony couldn’t take any chances. Visibility was a lot worse here, even if he had run the thermal scans already and his earpiece would alert him to any approaching horde. Even if the kid could have heard any approaching zombie.

 

That, and the stench here was unbearable without any wind to carry it away.

 

“Kid, it’s gonna stink. You may want to put the mask on now.”

 

The traps in the forest were pretty primitive - pits, spears and nets. Tony didn’t want to waste energy on shooting and bombing unless absolutely necessary. Just as he feared, almost all the traps had been triggered by the horde. They worked silently for the next hour, working their way through the forest in a parallel path to the Compound wall, before Tony had to raise a white flag. Even with the suit’s help, his arms were aching from heaving dead bodies around, and the smell was beginning to permeate into his suit.

 

“Hey, let’s take a look at the trenches and leave the rest of the traps for later, maybe tomorrow.” Tony said. “I’m spent.”

 

Peter nodded, although he looked a lot less exhausted than Tony did.

 

The trenches were massive, deep gorges that had been dug in a rough circle around the Compound, much like an empty moat. They were extremely effective at keeping out zombies. They either just hung around on the other side or stumbled right in, waiting to be incinerated at 24-hour intervals. When the massive swarms came though, even the trenches could be filled up. Right now, they were filled to the brim with piles of gargling zombies, limbs askew and bodies broken from being trampled on. Tony nearly threw up all the coffee he had inhaled earlier that morning.

 

“What do you do with these?” Peter asked. Even with mask hiding half his face, Tony could see the kid wanted to spew out his guts too.

 

“Burn them.”

 

A few commands through his HUD later, a terrible moan began to shudder through the mounds of flailing zombies. Tony couldn’t even see the orange flames from how tightly packed the trenches were. He grabbed the kid’s shoulder and yanked him away.

 

“You don’t wanna see this.”

 

Tony quickly headed back towards the walls, desperately trying to ignore the growing screams of the things, the zombies - the _not people_ \- behind him. He always left the trench incineration last, so he could escape back to the silence of the Compound immediately after. He couldn’t take it. It drove him mad, the way those things shrieked and screamed, and Tony knew, _knew_ they could feel the pain, like how he also knew that they were mindless things that only wanted to eat him, and that he needed to kill them, it was just self-defence. The flames would only take 30 seconds, a minute tops, to get rid of them. Yet every single time, he would think of Pepper and Happy and Rhodey and every person he ever knew writhing in the fire, hands stretched out and crying for salvation. Tony walked faster, nearly running, because there were too many people - _zombies, monsters, things_ \- in the pits today and the fire was taking too long.

 

It was a sweet relief when he cleared the treelines and left the sounds behind. He disengaged the suit and sucked in the relatively fresh air of the open field. The oxygen in his lungs drowned out the horror he had just witnessed like dawn washing away remnants of a nightmare.

 

He only remembered Peter then. Beside him, the boy was shaking like a leaf.

 

“Kid?”

 

Peter clamped his hand over his ear. Shit, Tony had forgotten about his super-hearing. 

 

“Hey.” Tony reached for his shoulder but the kid jerked back violently. His eyes were shut tight, tears leaking out at the sides. “Woah, woah, it's just me.”

 

Peter recoiled even further, falling onto his knees like Tony’s words physically hurt him. “T-there’s...oh god, there-there-”

 

“Hey, breathe.”

 

“They’re screaming.”

 

“It’s okay, kid. The fire got rid of them. They’re gone now.” Tony said, feeling distressed, guilty. Why did he forget about the kid's hearing? Why did he not have the bloody foresight to send him back before heading to the trenches? “They’re not screaming anymore.”

 

“No!” Peter said, hands still pressed over his ears. “You-you don’t understand. There’s still some left. I can…” The kid closed his eyes tighter, pressed his hands harder against his head. Tony quickly grabbed him before he collapsed to the ground and this time, Peter let him.

 

“I can hear them.”

 

Tony froze. It was all catching up to him. He had ignored before and it was here _again_. His hands on the kid’s arms seemed to burn, and he wanted to rip them away, but letting him go felt like an acknowledgment, of something.

 

“Where are they?” He said instead, his voice sounding very distant but calm. Measured. Adult-like.

 

The kid cried out a little, relief and helplessness all rolled into one little puff of air.

 

“North.” The kid said, so soft Tony could barely hear him. “Nearer to the back walls.”

 

Tony nodded, slowly. “Friday, run a scan. Point me to any zombies remaining in the trench.”

 

“Understood, boss.” F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied his in earpiece. “Coordinates, 41 degrees, 47 minutes and 14.6 seconds north, and 75 degrees, 2 minutes and 31.7 seconds west. Location, 940.16 feet from your current location, to your 1 o’clock.”

 

_What..._

 

“Boss, the sound emitted by the two remaining zombies is approximately 45 decibels.”

 

_...the fuck?_

 

The kid could hear the dying groans of a zombie from nearly 1000 feet away.

 

Tony’s arms fell slack at his sides, his blood roared in his ears. The kid looked up at him then, an expression of absolute heartbreak on his face.

 

“P-please, I’m sorry. Please, I don’t-please don’t-”

 

“What are you?” Tony whispered.

 

Tears streamed down Peter’s face and he began to shake his head.

 

“I’m sorry. Please, please don’t make me leave. Please, Mr. Stark, I don’t want to-please.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. I was supposed to reach this point so much earlier but my plans changed. LOL 
> 
> Also, did you notice how I snuck in that last line there? HEH. I couldn't bring myself to finish it though. I also referenced another IW line in another chapter, but I don't know if anyone noticed.
> 
> And do you know that I don't ship Tony/Pepper at all? Yet look at me, getting past that to write them lmaoooo


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to say this the last chapter but remember how I said I speak/write in British English but the characters are American? Well, the lovely AnonEhouse has been helping to correct any mistakes in my fics! They even found a brand of cookies that is sold in boxes because I said a box of cookies. T_T Thanks so much. It is now canon in this AU that Peter likes Oreos. 
> 
> I'm really grateful to everyone who has helped/supported me. This chapter was tough for me to write and I am trying to improve with every chapter I post. So it motivates me a lot to read all your comments.

 

“Please, Mr. Stark. I’m sorry-I’m-I’m not sick, I’m not, I’m not one of them-please-”

 

The kid was babbling incoherently, eyes wild, hands clasped in front of him, begging. The image struck Tony as vulgar, wrong, but in a weird, detached way - as if he was looking through a screen and viewing someone else's thoughts. The words falling from the kid’s mouth barely registered in his brain. It was too fixated on F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s message to process anything else. It was one thing to make conjectures on what the kid could hear, quite another to hear the wild speculation confirmed with hard numbers.

 

 _87.52% human_.

 

What else would F.R.I.D.A.Y. find in her blood scans? What would be waiting for him when they returned to the Compound?

 

Although the questions had whirled around in Tony’s mind since the previous night, he hadn’t quite considered how he would deal with the actual answers - the alcohol had made any coherent plan impossible. He had expected another hour, maybe two, before he headed back to the lab for the test results. Told himself that he would think then about what he would do, the conversations he needed to have with the boy, the precautions they needed to take. There was supposed to be more _time_ before he was slapped in the face with confirmation that all those crack theories of human experimentation might have yielded results, or that the disease hadn’t just spit out zombies, it had also enhanced human beings and altered their genetic make-up.

 

He hadn’t decided on _how_ he should react. So he just stared, unseeing, at the panicking kid in front of him - a malfunctioned human being that had stopped processing, because that was what he was, wasn't it? A broken person.

 

It wasn’t until a harsh intake of air split through the air that he was jolted sharply out of his trance. In front of him, Peter gave a strangled cry, his hands reaching up to clutch at his neck, eyes bulging out.

 

_Shit. Oh shit._

 

“Kid?”

 

Peter gasped, letting out that harsh, ragged sound of air constricted in his throat again. It hit him that the kid couldn’t _breathe_. Tony rushed forward, all misgivings forgotten, hands reaching out for the kid. He placed one on Peter’s back and another on his chest.

 

“Kid. You’re okay. Just breathe. Come on, breathe. Follow me, you can do this.” Tony began to exhale and inhale in exaggerated motions, pressing down on Peter’s chest gently but firmly to the same rhythm. Peter grabbed Tony’s arm, fingers digging in painfully. His grip was strong, too strong, and Tony gritted his teeth in pain.

 

“That's right, just follow me, you’re doing good. You’re doing great.” Tony murmured continuously, mimicking the words that Rhodey and Pepper had intoned to him so many times before. It felt awkward on his tongue - he had always been at the receiving end, never the person actually saying them. Now, there was a sixteen-year old kid panicking right in front of him, holding onto Tony for dear life, and the words felt woefully inadequate.

 

It took a few minutes, but Peter’s breathing gradually evened out and the grip on Tony’s forearm fell slack. He was sure that would bruise later. A shiver shook Peter’s entire body, and he shifted closer to Tony before jerking back abruptly, as if realising mid-movement what his body was unconsciously doing.

 

“S-sorry.” Peter said, his face pinched in a tight grimace. “I-I’m sorry.”

 

The kid peered up at Tony, brown eyes roving from side to side like they were searching Tony’s face. He didn’t know what the kid was looking for. He didn’t know what his expression currently looked like either, didn’t know what his expression _should_ look like, or what words he should say now that the panic attack was over and the silence was settling in. They were crouched over amongst smoking piles of zombies and the kid looked like he had been a few minutes away from just keeling over and dying. How did it come to this? How had Tony screwed this up so monumentally?

 

Peter’s lips thinned and his eyes fell from Tony’s face to the ground. Tony caught that look of heartbreak on the kid’s face again right before he shifted his face out of Tony’s line of sight.

 

“I…” Peter’s voice cracked. He tried again. “I’ll leave now.”

 

God, he wasn’t equipped to deal with this. He should have slept, shouldn’t have touched that scotch last night. His head was pounding painfully and there were bright flashes when he closed his eyes. Tony rubbed his temples, sighed. He _should_ send the kid back first though. He needed to check out why those two zombies were still alive, because if everything had worked properly, they should have burned to ash along with the rest of its brethren. It would be a bad idea to bring the kid along again - the whole thing might set him off into another attack. He should send the kid back, fix whatever was up with the trenches, and once that whole mess was sorted out, he could worry about...everything else.

 

He needed time to think.

 

“Yeah, you should.” Tony said, a groan slipping out as he struggled to his feet. He had been kneeling at an awkward angle, and after the past two hours of zombie-carrying, his knees and back were protesting. He was really fucking hungry now too.

 

The kid was looking up at him with wide eyes, hurt written all over his face. It threw Tony off. Wasn’t he the one that offered to leave, the one who had been crying from the zombie’s cries? Should Tony be bringing him along?

 

His head was pretty much starting to burst through his skull now and Tony felt too weary to decipher the look. 

 

“Just, close the doors behind you, then wait in the Compound. I’ll handle the two remaining.”

 

The kid hesitated, searching Tony’s face for something again. Tony felt a twinge of irritation - what did the kid expect from him? But before he could spit out a biting retort that he would no doubt regret immediately, the kid shook his head, wiped the last of his tears away and got up.

 

“I can explain. I just- I just-”

 

“Later kid.” Tony said, before he had a chance to be cruel. Because Tony could be so cruel when he was tired or frustrated, and his emotions were an unhealthy combination of both right now. The kid didn’t deserve that, not after what had just happened, because Tony Stark was an asshole but he had enough awareness and conscience to not _want_ to be an asshole to a kid after a panic attack. “We’ll talk later. Wait in the Compound, the lobby, grab some water.”

 

Hurt flashed across the kid’s face again.

 

“Okay.”

 

Tony watched him trudge off, shoulders slumped in defeat, hands rising to his face to no doubt wipe away tears.

 

Fuck.

 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

 

 

+++

 

Tony had quickly taken care of the remaining zombies. The high voltage generator responsible for igniting the fire in that area of the trench was broken, leaving a patch untouched by the flames - the surrounding zombies had burned off too quickly for the flames to spread to the two in that alcove. He would have to fix that another day. He didn’t have the parts right now to repair the generator, and he was too exhausted to do it even if he had - mentally, physically, emotionally, hell, maybe spiritually. A quick blast from his repulsors took care of the zombies. There wasn’t much of them left to blast anyway.

 

Instead of heading back straight after, though, Tony had taken unnecessarily long surveying the surrounding parts of the trench, choosing to manually inspect the generators and exhaust pipings under the pretense of minimising the strain on F.R.I.D.A.Y. and his ailing reactors, ignoring the pangs of hunger and the exhaustion in his bones. After checking the ignition systems twenty feet or so in each direction, the afternoon heat became too unbearable to justify staying out. He had walked back through the gate instead of flying over, told himself he had to make sure the doors were closed properly, and he was now very, very thoroughly washing his arms clean. He would probably get a warning message later about the amount of water he was wasting.

 

Against the rather soothing backdrop of the gush of water, he gathered the multitude of thoughts that he had spent the past half-hour mulling over.

 

_Iron Man._

 

_Mr. Stark._

 

_Please I’m not one of them._

 

_Tony, you have to do it._

 

_Tony, it’s okay. You’ll be okay._

 

_Tony, please, look at me._

 

_It’s me. It’s still me._

 

Tony wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Despite feeling ashamed from procrastinating for so long, the alone time had been good for him. Necessary, even. A part of him had wanted to stride right back in, ask the kid all the questions that burned inside him, find out what else the kid was hiding. Because super-hearing couldn't be the only thing. The muscle scans and the kid's smooth, scar-less skin indicated at least some enhanced strength and healing ability.

 

But Tony knew that if he went in without sorting out his own head, he would say things he would regret. Tony had given plenty of knee-jerk reactions before, spent a lifetime without thinking about the consequences of his actions, and experience had told him that he screwed those up about 95% of the time. He knew he would be going to hear things that would freak the shit out of him, drag out forgotten childhood nightmares and conjure up images of decomposed creatures attacking him in the dead of the night, almost always wearing the remains of Pepper's face. So before all that happened, he had to separate out the logical truths from the illogical fears, block out the demons in his head that whispered to him. 

 

He decided that he had his conclusion, his final stance on the problem in front of him. A decision, really.

 

This was okay. Whatever the kid told him after he walked into that Compound lobby, the kid was okay. He may not be completely human, sure, but he wasn’t a zombie for god’s sake. Tony had seen what those monsters could do. Watched them, hours on end, advancing on the compound with their arms stretched out and their disgusting mouths bared open to show rotting teeth. He had seen Pepper in her last few moments, the red lines in her eyes and the wildness that festered in them, the woman he loved no longer recognising him, seeing him as nothing more than something to kill. _It’s me, it’s still me_ \- until she wasn’t. These...these things - _Pepper, Pepper had become one of them -_ were incapable of thought or memories besides an instinctive need to feed. It wasn’t fair to lump Peter together with those things outside there - Peter, who had washed the dishes at 3 a.m. in the morning after walking for probably 40 or 50 hours to reach Tony, who had looked at Tony with shining eyes when he had been offered the chance to play around in the labs, who liked Oreos and rambled about it to calm Tony down. That Peter. He was a kid, a sweet kid, a _human_ kid. Just a teenager. If Tony’s overactive imagination had Peter lunging at him with teeth bared, that was Tony’s own fault, not the kid’s. Peter hadn’t done anything to justify that conclusion.

 

_His eyes were red._

 

No, they weren’t. Tony had imagined that. Just as he had imagined the kid’s suspicious behaviour in the lab when Tony took his blood. He wasn’t hiding anything. He wasn’t going to turn around and go _Aha!_ at Tony and stab him in the heart. Kid had broken down just from Tony’s discovery of his super-hearing.

 

_You sure? You really think that there's nothing the kid could say to you that you couldn't accept?_

 

Tony would cross that bridge when he came to it. As it was, there was no reason to assume the kid was a threat. There may be an unknown 12.48% part of him that was something else, but Peter was, in all the important ways, a human. Smiled and cried and got scared like a human. Spoke of his family and friends like a human. He wasn’t a monster.

 

_But he could become one. Just like Pepper. Just like James and Dean and Ellen. Just like Happy would have been if you hadn’t monumentally screwed the fuck up-_

 

No, he couldn’t go down that spiral again. He couldn’t. Tony scrubbed his hands harder, fingers raking over the veins on the back of his hand, between his fingernails, in the grooves of his palm, as if they could never be truly clean. They wouldn’t be, but he couldn’t let it haunt him forever. The kid was fine. Tony just needed to make sure he never turned. He had the entire Compound at his disposal - it couldn’t be hard to keep one teenager safe, especially a teenager that had survived for, what did he say, six, nine months. All without turning.

 

He wished Rhodey’s voice would speak to him again, reassure him. He wanted his friend back. Rhodey would know what to do. He would speak in that calm, level voice of his and spout reason and logic.

 

_But I’m here Tones. I’ve always been here._

 

Tony’s hands shook under the steady flow of water.

 

It was fine.

 

Tony washed his face, turned the tap off, pressed his fingers to his eyes until the tears stopped, and headed back in.

 

+++

 

The kid cut a pitiful figure in the vast lobby of the Compound, the massive “STARK INDUSTRIES” stainless steel logo that adorned the entire three-storey wall behind him accentuating his small frame. It felt like a reproof of Tony’s handling of this whole drama. If he could freeze that image and frame it up, he was sure it could constitute art - _ladies and gentlemen, here we have, The Guilty Conscience. Kindly unpack the many layers of symbolism this one image has. Nostalgia, childhood innocence, compassion, emptiness._ He might have been able to sell it for half a million dollars at an art gallery.

 

“Hey, kid.” Tony said as he walked over, relieved that his voice was steady, casual, like Tony Stark the adult, the billionaire. He swung a water bottle in his hand, tossing it in the air to keep his mind occupied, glad to see his hands were stable enough to catch it smoothly. If the kid was anything like himself, he wouldn’t have entirely good coping mechanisms after a panic attack - which meant, in all likelihood, that he hadn’t actually gotten himself water.

 

“Mr. Stark.” Peter replied, once Tony reached the cluster of sofas where was sitting. His voice sounded strained, like his throat was too dry, so Tony was right.

 

“So…we need to have a conversation.” The kid turned his head away, lips pulled into a tight line like he was trying not to cry again. Tony sighed. “Hey, come on, look at me. Look at me, Peter.”

 

It was the first time he had addressed the kid by name, and it worked. Peter’s jaw tensed, but he finally acquiesced after a moment. There weren’t any tears, but the kid’s eyes were glassy. This was going to end so, so well. 

 

It couldn’t be helped. For better or for worse, this was it. Conversation time.

 

Tony had decided, somewhere between turning off the tap and entering the lobby, that honesty was the way to go. The plan was hardly well thought out - hell, it barely even qualified as a plan - but the kid was trustworthy, Tony could admit his own fear to him. Being open with one another was key to a healthy relationship, Tony had reminded himself. At least that’s what the relationship self-help articles that F.R.I.D.A.Y. had summarised for him had all said, back when he had turned to them in a moment of drunken helplessness. Plus, the whole _let’s not mention the elephant in the room_ thing had clearly not yielded good results. He should probably minimise the number of times a superhuman child broke down. He had the bruises on his arm to show for it.  

 

Tony took the plunge.

 

“Look, I’m…I’m freaked, okay? Like, I’m-watching-the-Exorcist level of freaked out.” Tony said, pushing out the words before his mind fully caught up and over-complicate things, trying to maintain his speech at sassy-Tony Stark and not isolated-paranoid-Tony Stark. “I’ve had to deal with a freaking zombie apocalypse, the extinction of the human race and now a kid turns up on my doorstep who can hear a zombie dying from a thousand feet off. It’s all getting a little much for my old heart and my sleep-deprived brain. So. I’m not trying to make you feel, I don’t know, shitty. Fucked up. Whatever negative emotion your teenage brain is probably feeling. I’m just going to need you to explain everything to me. Beginning to end, nothing left out. Treat me as your diary.”

 

Peter looked a little taken aback, a little unsure, but after a few moments, slowly nodded.

 

“I’m going to need you to say something, kid, come on.”

 

“Yes, okay.” Peter said, still looking uncertain.

 

“Good.”

 

Tony placed the the water bottle on the coffee table, slid it across with a quick slap and took a seat on the lounge chair opposite Peter.

 

“Drink up. I’m guessing this a long story.”

 

Peter eyed the bottle with slightly narrowed eyes.

 

“Geez, kid, don’t worry. It isn’t a truth serum. Just water.”

 

“I didn’t-” Peter sighed. “Thanks.” He grabbed the bottle, unscrewed the cap and took a long swig.

 

The bottle was nearly empty by the time he put it back down on the table. Tony knees were jiggling nervously, and he wished he had brought another bottle for himself, just to give his hands something to do. He settled for a loose string on the side of the chair. When the kid finally placed the bottle down, Tony took a deep breath and steeled himself. He doubted the kid was going to speak, so he had to put his own cowardice aside and ask the tough questions.

 

“Now that you are sufficiently hydrated, let’s get down to business, hm?” The kid avoided his eyes. “First question, what can you do?”

 

Peter’s eyes flickered up, caught Tony’s own, and quickly flittered back down to the table. One hand grabbed at his other wrist, the nervous tell rearing its head again. “I, uh, well I can hear well.”

 

Tony snorted. “Yeah, I could tell.”

 

“And uh, my senses in general, t-they are, well, they are dialed up to eleven. My eyesight, smell, taste, touch. Not as- not as much as my hearing, but they’re all super sensitive too. I even have some sort of, I don’t know, sixth sense. I can tell if something is going to be off. S-so, like.” Peter licked his lips. “Like just now, it’s not just that I could have heard the zombies. I can-I can _feel_ if they are going to come.”

 

As freakish as that sounded, and the comparisons to the Exorcist were feeling a tad too creepy now, Tony couldn’t deny that a part of him - the scientist in him, more specifically - was intrigued. Of course, there had to be some scientific basis for it, which Tony was absolutely going to look into once they had gotten past this whole unfortunate phase of their relationship.

 

Probably because Tony didn’t immediately respond, Peter glanced at him briefly, as if to check his expression. After the clusterfuck that was the past hour, Tony had learned his lesson. He had from the start of the conversation made sure to keep a neutral expression, and fully intended to keep any outward expressions of emotions minimal during this whole exchange. He would have liked to look understanding, kind, but this was the best he could do.

 

The kid looked a little crestfallen at whatever he saw on Tony’s face and Tony knew his best wasn’t enough.

 

He quickly said the first thing that came to mind. “You always hear so well?”

 

“Oh, er, no, no, not always. I can if I, if I concentrate, I guess. But usually it’s not so bad. I just...freaked out this time.” The kid blushed, as if embarrassed. “And when I freak out, I get these, uh, these sensory o-overloads where my senses are dialed up to, like, a hundred instead.”

 

“Hm.” Tony hummed. “Anything else I need to know about?”

 

Peter looked downright miserable at that question.

 

“Oh god, what can you do?”

 

“W-well, I heal quickly.”

 

Okay that wasn’t so bad. Tony had already predicted that one after the physical examination that morning. There was no way the kid could have lived through the apocalypse with no injuries. 

 

“And I, uh, I’m strong, fast.”

 

That was a little concerning, but again, nothing new, sort of. The only thing he needed to know was how strong, how fast. It was an asset, really, make the kid do the heavy-work.

 

“And I can stick to walls.”

 

Tony’s thoughts halted.

 

“Stick to walls.”

 

“Y-yeah.”

 

“Like...like a bug.”

 

“Like a spider.”

 

Now _that_ was something new. Maybe it was the lack of food and sleep catching up to him, but the room began to spin. The thought of the kid crawling up walls like a spider was somehow more disconcerting than anything else he had thrown at Tony. Because the image of the kid crawling along a wall, hands and feet splayed against the wall and back crouched, was grotesque.

 

_Like a monster._

 

Tony shook his head, gripped the sides of his chair lightly to steady himself. The movement didn’t escape Peter’s notice, but that couldn’t be helped. Tony had to ground himself somehow. The dizziness lessened and the room steadied to a manageable level.

 

_Not a monster. Just, a human with something special._

 

“Okay. Okay. You can climb walls like a spider. And, how strong are we talking about?”

 

“I can...I can lift a car?”

 

Again, the traitorous thoughts sprung into action before Tony could reign them in, feeding his mind unbidden, unwelcome images of Peter - hands ripping his throat out, eyes red and blood running down his chin, Tony’s heart in his hands.

 

_He could have broken your arm when he gripped you - you thought that hurt but he was holding back - a kid in a panic attack holding back and you complain about bruising._

 

 _He held back, that’s what makes him human, dipshit._ Tony shot back. It felt nice, telling himself off, but Tony felt the strings holding his fragile psyche together begin to unravel. He should end this conversation, quick, grab himself a bite to eat, go back at it later. 

 

“Well, that's...something." Tony said, going for casual and instead sounding harsh. He winced. What was the normal thing to being told someone could stick to walls and lift cars? Ask for a demonstration? Ask to look at the kid's hands?

 

"So, how did this all happen?”  

 

The kid shrugged, wringing his hands together and brows furrowed like he was trying to recall the memories. 

 

“I-I don’t know. I just…I came down with a fever and before I know it, I could hear the cat meowing from down the block, the neighbours from a block over, and the smell of..." The kid gestured with his hands before they dropped back to his lap. "... _everything._ It was so much that I couldn’t, I couldn’t even get out of bed. Be- I mean, it was...the only thing I could think of was that I visited the Oscorp facility that week b-but I’m not sure it’s even linked.”

 

Oscorp.

 

The cogs in Tony's head, turning faster and faster as they tried to keep up with the kid's revelations, came to a jarring halt. His breath caught in his throat and the room stilled. 

 

He had his next question ready, but now, he didn't feel like asking it anymore. But he had to, because the kid and brought up Oscorp.  

 

“When...when did this happen to you?”

 

It was obvious the kid wanted to answer this even less than Tony had wanted to ask it. His gaze left Tony’s and began to rove around the room, searching for a new abode, before finally settling on the glass windows facing the lawn outside. The kid’s reaction was answer enough.

 

“I’m waiting, kid.”

 

Peter bit his lip, still staring resolutely out the windows. “About...about one and a half years ago? Late January.”

 

Two months before the first report of the plague.

 

Tony breathed in sharply. An unexpected, red-hot rage flashed through him. 

 

Oscorp. 

 

_Stop, it could be a coincidence. Two months is a long time._

 

_The first report is never the first case. Things could have been brewing a long time before that._

 

_A hypothesis, nothing more._

 

_A potential fact._

 

_They killed the human race._

 

_S.H.I.E.L.D. confirmed it came from the ice._

 

_Oscorp confirmed it too, and yet here we are._

 

Back when his R&D had worked with the CDC and other major scientific organisations to find a cure, a select committee had been set up to investigate the disease’s origins. The committee had been short-lived. Once huge chunks of the world’s population began dying within weeks, Tony had diverted all his company’s manpower and resources to finding a cure, origin be damned. The last finding he was privy to was that the mutation originated from some islands in the North Atlantic Ocean. He was told later that the ice had melted there recently due to global warming, which might have released something into the air. The finding had been supported by S.H.I.E.L.D., whose intelligence records gave them access to travel patterns and potential patient zeroes. Oscorp had remained on the committee after Stark Industries left.

 

Tony had already considered the possibility that the disease had caused the genetic mutations in Peter. It seemed more plausible than the kid being an actual labrat, because he liked to believe that if something like that was happening in New York, he would have known about it. But now, confronted with the possibility that Oscorp might be linked to this whole mess, that the disease might have some man-made basis, a coldness settled over him. He felt angry. So fucking angry. And for just a moment, that anger went straight to the kid sitting in front of him. 

 

The disease gave the kid powers, but it took Pepper. 

 

The thought went away as quickly as it came, because the kid had nothing to do with this, but the damage was done. Because Tony had  fallen into silence and was staring very intently at the kid. Whatever rage he had felt, it had clearly shown, because the kid shrunk back into his seat, as if to put as much distance between himself and Tony as possible. In the kid’s eyes was pure, unadulterated fear.

 

There was a curious, suspended moment in time, before the rest of his mind caught up, where something clicked in Tony’s head, like a puzzle piece falling into - no, more like those 3D optical illusions where he had to cross his eyes until, at just the right angle and focus, a completely new image popped out - a number, an animal, a flower. Really, it would have been funny if the whole situation wasn’t so tragic. Tony was the one losing his shit over the kid being a threat and here the kid was, scared out of his wits, probably because - as easy as it was to forget this teensy little fact himself - in the kid’s eyes, Tony was _Iron Man_. It was a startling realisation. He had been so preoccupied with his own fears that he had completed failed to consider how the kid saw _him_. And, even in such close proximity, even with the kid’s super strength and speed and everything else, it would take just a few seconds to summon up his repulsors and blast a hole in the kid’s chest. When Peter’s eyes dropped down for just half a second to the nano-container at his chest, Tony knew this time, it wasn’t because of his heartbeat.

 

A certain calmness spread through him at the recognition of his own power - replacing the fear that had embedded itself into his bones since the previous night - followed swiftly by disgust and horror. The kid actually thought Tony might attack him.

 

“Relax, kid.” Tony said, grappling with the fear in the kid's eyes - the fear the Tony put there - and what that said about Tony's behaviour. “I’m not going to...whatever you’re thinking, you can toss it out.”

 

Peter didn't look convinced. "You’re angry.” He said, his voice small.

 

Tony tried to find a way to respond. Tell him that it wasn’t him, it was Tony’s messed up mind. Because that’s what Tony was, messed up, through and through. Irrational, full of mood swings, generally unstable, and the last person that should be taking responsibility for an enhanced teenager in a post-apocalyptic world.

 

Nothing came out though, because while it seemed Tony Stark always had something to say - a witty comeback, a quick punchline - the truth was, he was a slave to his own thoughts when it really mattered. It was how they had reached this point, wasn’t it? Because Tony couldn’t open his fucking mouth and say a single word.

 

“Is...is that all?” Peter said meekly.

 

“I’m not sure, kid.” Tony snapped, words shooting out on auto-pilot because that came easier than apologising, even though he didn't mean to say any of it. “I don’t have a handbook on conversations to have with newly discovered superhumans.”

 

The kid’s mouth clamped shut immediately, his body going rigid. God, Tony was a jerk. He was a Grade A asshole.

 

“I...I can leave now.”

 

He should say no, tell the kid to stay and explain that it wasn’t his fault. Instead, Tony nodded tiredly, sitting back in his seat, too exhausted. They could continue this conversation later, because somewhere towards the tail-end, Tony had completely lost the plot. His mind was a scattered mess now and he would probably do more harm than good if he continued. Plus, he needed food. More water. Sleep. Everything required for normal human functioning.

 

“Can I just...take some food before I go?” Peter asked, looking broken. Tony’s heart ached. Jesus, this was like him and Howard all over again, Tony eating in his room after a screaming session from his father on yet another thing he managed to screw up. Except Peter hadn’t screwed up. He hadn’t asked for any of this. “Just a few cans will do, something to eat on the way to New York.”

 

Wait.

 

Tony stared at the kid.

 

Wait, what?

 

“New York?” Tony repeated, confused. “What are you going back to New York for?”

 

The kid froze. Tony's own confusion was reflected on his face.

 

“I thought- I thought you asked me to leave.” He said, voice unsteady.

 

It took a few seconds for the words to make sense. Then another second for the guilt to crash into Tony in waves.

 

“Jesus Christ, kid. I meant leave as in, go to your bedroom. I’m not-” _A monster._  Except he was. The kid had fully expected Tony to toss him out of the Compound, then to attack him. That was all on him. “Kid, I was asking you to go back into the Compound. I’m not kicking you out.”

 

A small, sharp rush of wind escaped Peter. Tony couldn't catch all the emotions that shot across the kid's face - disbelief, confusion, relief. His body twitched, and for a horrible moment, Tony thought the boy would launch himself at him. He wasn’t ready for any touch, for any sort of proximity.

 

"I don't understand...Mr. Stark, I- thank you. Thank you." The kid's eyes were watery, tears gathering on his long lashes. "Thank you, I thought, I thought I had to leave again. I’m-”

 

Again?

 

Tony felt like a terrible human being. He probably was. A terrible fucking human being.

 

“Kid, you're killing me." Tony said, pinching the bridge of his nose, willing his headache to go away. "Just...let me get used to this okay? And let me run tests, I’m…You are staying. We can put some of that strength to good use. If you can lift cars, you can lift zombies. I’m just...I’m going trust you not to punch me with that strength, okay?"

 

He didn't know why he said that. He should apologise. For that, for everything. 

 

Peter stared at him, tear-filled eyes so, so sad.

 

“Mr. Stark, I spent the past eight months trying to find another human. Why would I-” His voice cracked. “Why would I hurt you?”

 

 _Why would I hurt_ you _?_ Tony wanted to say. He felt gutted.

  

“I know, kid. I just need time.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote Chapters 5 and 6 at one go because I couldn't decide how to split it up. The initial plan had been to post them as one chapter but I felt it would be too long. They are both a little dialogue-heavy, because I think Tony and Peter need to clear the air before the plot can properly progress. SO I am behind on my outline LOL


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for uploading this late! I am super busy this week so next chapter might be delayed as well. After that it should be back to normal. Sorry :( 
> 
> Fun fact: I had originally planned to stretch out the tension over a few weeks before Tony found out about Peter's powers, but with how paranoid Tony is and how advanced Friday's med-scans would be, I couldn't see how Peter could hide his abilities for that long. That said, I'm also a little dissatisfied with my current pacing (not the story's pacing, but rather how fast things are happening in-universe) - still, Infinity War took place in about 24-48 hours, so sometimes things do move fast. Haha I'll take this is a learning experience and hopefully handle timelines better moving forward and for future fics :)
> 
> On a less introspective note, I realised I had been spelling "Iron Man" as "Ironman". *facepalms*

 

As much as Tony wanted to haul the kid out and witness his abilities in action, the intensity of the hunger pangs racking his stomach were way past the point of ignoring. Plus, he figured the food might just replace the shame and disgust that had settled there.

 

“Let’s go eat, kid.”

 

Lunch was a silent, fairly depressing affair. Tony couldn’t quite think of anything to say after that whole conversation. He was emotionally drained, his head was throbbing, and all he really wanted at this point was to retire to his bedroom and sleep until the next week. Hell, maybe even the next year. The kid was still shooting him apprehensive glances, and his ravenous appetite seemed to have deserted him, because he was picking at the sandwich in front of him like a child being forced to eat. Tony doubted it was because he didn't like defrosted pickles, although, truth be told, that shit was disgusting.

 

 _He thought I would attack him_.

 

Tony scrubbed his face, wondered how many times he had done that in the past twelve hours and whether his skin was going to be rubbed raw in the next twelve. How the fuck could so much shit go down in just twelve hours anyway? It felt more like a week of interminable agony had gone by - drawn out and constant. Maybe the scotch had addled his brain, maybe a week _had_ gone by and he had just spent the whole of that time passed out in his lab. His headache rivalled some truly memorable migraines from his youth, so he couldn’t discount the idea entirely.

 

The empty hallways and rooms seemed to close in on him. The scrape of the plates against the counter-top sounded too loud.

 

Surprisingly, it was the kid that made the first move. Maybe he hated the silence too, maybe he was just tired of Tony’s inaction - either way, Tony was glad that he was once again relieved of the burden of taking initiative.

 

“Do you- do you want to see, Mr. Stark?” Peter asked, after a good minute of chewing a bite of his sandwich.

 

“See what?” Right, be obtuse, when the kid is making an effort.

 

To his credit, the kid trudged on valiantly. “My-what- what I can do. I could show you.”

 

That would delay his much-needed nap by at a least thirty minutes, probably, and Tony wasn’t quite sure how ready he was to see the kid clamber up a wall, but the fact was that they had reached this stage - had the truth forced out into the open like a dam breaking under the weight of the water behind it, and the only way to stem the flow was to let the reservoir drain out. With any luck, this would provide them some relief. They could move on, focus on more productive things, like contingency plans or ways to leverage on the kid’s powers. Anything would be preferable to whatever was going on between them right now.

 

“Okay,” Tony finally replied, after taking his own sweet time to finish up his sandwich. “We can go outside.”

 

“Erm, I can just...” Peter trailed off, fidgeting as his eyes travelled upwards to the ceiling above them. Tony raised an eyebrow.

 

“Here?”

 

Peter shrugged, almost sheepishly, and when Tony didn’t protest any further, slid off his counter seat and walked over to the wall. He shot Tony another apprehensive glance - the kid needed to stop doing that because he was making _Tony_ nervous - then with a deep breath, placed his hands gingerly on the wall and _began to climb_.

 

Tony didn’t know what he had expected.

 

“You are sticking to the walls.”

 

“Uh...yes?” Peter replied, twisting his head around to look at Tony. He had nearly hit the ceiling by now, and Tony had to lean back in his chair to meet his eyes. “I-I said I could stick to walls.”

 

“But, like, your feet and fingers are literally sticking to the walls.”

 

The kid’s expression could only be described as cautiously amused. “Y-es, Mr. Stark. Literally.” He unstuck one hand from the wall - Tony almost expected a suction sound, like a rubber pump being pulled off a wall, but it was entirely silent - and turned around, as if deciding where to go. “Um, should I come back down now? O-or do you want to see more?”

 

Tony’s brain was doing that thing again, where it wasn’t really registering whatever sensory input it was receiving, and instead projecting the worst possible nightmarish image his imagination could conjure, and his imagination could be _good_ \- a decaying body, maggots falling out of one empty eye socket, the other eyeball glowing red in the darkness of the night, a shadowy silhouette crawling outside the tall glass windows of his bedroom. With a single punch, it shattered the glass; with a single leap, it landed on Tony’s bed, clawed hands digging into his sleeping form and jerking him from his slumber. The scream stuck in his throat.

 

Then the image was gone and Peter was there, smaller than him, all soft brown eyes and wavy brown locks.  

 

“Give me a moment.” Tony squeezed out, hand massaging his neck like that would loosen the constricted muscles there. He needed to vocalise. Speak. The kid’s features were warping into fear again and Tony couldn’t handle a repeat of that whole saga. “I’m not- I’m not kicking you out. Don’t get me wrong. Just, give me a moment.”

 

“It’s okay, Mr. Stark.” Peter said, giving him a tight smile. “It’s a lot to take in. You’re not the first to freak out.”

 

Right, the kid had been with others. Tony grabbed at the topic.

 

“The others knew? The people you were with?”

 

“Only a few.” Peter hesitated before taking a seat at the counter again, eyes on Tony the whole time. Tony felt a twinge of pain somewhere behind his sternum - vaguely, he recognised the emotion as _hurt_. “Some thought I could help them. Others, they...they didn’t want to take the chance.”

 

“In case you turned.”

 

“Yeah. A zombie that can climb walls and punch through them? Not ideal.”

 

Tony laughed a little. A weird sense of relief flooded through him as he realised his nightmarish vision had been shared by others. Because that meant this was a normal reaction, which also meant he could get over this. As if on cue, his throat muscles finally unclenched and his heartbeat began to slow to manageable levels. “That’s an understatement.”

 

“Mm.” Peter said noncommittally. He had returned to poking at his sandwich with a fork.

 

They sat there for a while, both unspeaking, and slowly the palpable discomfort shifted into something more...neutral. Not comfortable, by any means, but at least Tony wasn’t imagining wall-climbing monsters and Peter had finished up the remaining morsels of bread. Tony wondered if the kid would offer to show him his strength, and he considered taking him down to the garage on the ground floor, let him lift one of his older cars.

 

“I should...I should probably show you the other thing.”

 

Well, that absolved Tony again from having to make the request. Maybe the kid could read minds. 

 

“Yeah, the super strength.”

 

“Oh.” Peter flinched. “That too.”

 

A few beats passed.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Even with his head bowed, Tony could see the pinced look on the kid’s face, which he was slowly recognising as a recurring expression for the kid.

 

“Kid, I swear to god-”

 

“I, er, should get my backpack.”

 

 

+++

 

 

Scaling walls was one thing.

 

Seeing a kid jump twenty feet into the sky, shoot a string of white _web_ out of some device on his wrists, then _swing_ around the side of the building, was something else.

 

_Holy fucking shit that looks awesome. Was this how people looked at me?_

 

The kid flicked out his other hand mid-swing, shot another string of webbing that stuck to the walls, and whipped around so fast in the opposite direction, it was a wonder he didn’t get whiplash.

 

_He kept grabbing his wrists. This is why._

 

Tony’s head felt woozy. He needed food. A few bottles of scotch. And that week-long nap.

 

Peter somersaulted in the air, like a goddamn Cirque du Soleil performer, white webbing floating like a string behind him as it snapped away from his wrists, before landing gracefully right in front of Tony. His hair was wind-swept and he looked more _alive_ than Tony had ever seen him. There was the ghost of a smile on his face like he had been grinning all the way through his flight. Tony knew the feeling. Even after years of being Iron Man, the fact that he could fucking fly had left him giggling like a child sometimes.

 

A few minutes passed in which Tony just stared at Peter and Peter very, very patiently waited. This time, he didn’t seem anxious or regretful. Instead, he had that defiant look on his face again, like he was willing to go down fighting about this. What would Tony be fighting him about? That was decidedly pretty fucking impressive. Perhaps it helped that he couldn’t imagine decaying zombies swinging around buildings.

 

“That thing on your wrists, let me see them.” Tony eventually said.

 

Peter scrambled to take them off. He handed Tony what looked like a pair of cuffs, or thick bracelets. It was a mix of cloth, metal and leather, with small little canisters attached to each cuff. Inside the canisters was a viscous white liquid.

 

“These- these are my web-shooters.” Peter said, pride evident in his voice. “I, um, I shoot webs out of them, and I can swing from buildings.”

 

“No kidding.” Tony muttered, turning around one of the cuffs and watching the liquid shift languidly inside them. “This...webbing-thing. Who manufactured it?”

 

Peter stood up a little straighter, that weird little defiant expression flaring up. “I did.”

 

That explained it, Tony thought, as understanding dawned on him. This was the kid’s own creation, and he was sticking up for it, defending it against any criticism Tony might throw at him. As an inventor himself, he could appreciate the kid’s response. He even felt a tug of respect for him. Not to mention how impressed Tony was that Peter had made this stuff himself - manufacturing something like this was quite the feat for a sixteen year old. He lifted the canisters to eye level, examining the sluggish liquid inside more closely. Peter was eyeing _him_ suspiciously, clearly waiting to Tony to say something.

 

What could he say?

 

Not that Tony didn’t have anything to say - hell, he owed the kid at least five different apologies. He just didn’t know where to start. For the first time, he was - _getting his head out of his ass -_ realising just how much of a chance this was. A turning point. He had been presented again with something so unbelievable, so out of this world - but instead of the discovery that zombies was real, it was now the existence of a living, breathing superhuman who _swung around on webs_. Because deep-down, Tony never gave up on humanity, on the possibility that he could reverse this, save the world. It was why he was still here, breathing, living, even though on the darkest of days he had stood on the roof-top and pondered how easy it would be to let it all go. No, this was an opportunity. He just needed to clamp down on the devil on his shoulder long enough to seize it.

 

_I’ve been telling you, Tones. You just needed to talk to him._

 

Tony’s mind was already running the equations - the chemical composition of the webbing, the changes in atmospheric pressure and oxygen exposure that clearly altered the viscosity as it shot out of the device, the tensile strength that bore the weight of a swinging kid, the fact that a sixteen-year-old had manufactured this in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Peter had mentioned being in a STEM school, but that was different from being a _genius_.

 

Maybe he had been wrong about the type of person fate had gifted him. Maybe he had been given the best person after all. He just needed to shift his worldview a little bit.

 

_Not zombie. Not the undead. An enhanced genius. A child who seeks you out for guidance. You’ve been given a lifeline, not a death sentence._

 

Tony gripped the cuffs and nodded at himself, at his own thoughts.

 

“Kid. You wanted to see the labs right?”

 

Peter jerked back a bit at the unexpected question.

 

“Y-yeah?”

 

“Good. So here’s the game plan. We shower, get the zombie brains out of our hair, maybe make a side-trip to lift some cars because I haven’t forgotten that superman thing you conveniently forgot, and then we head to the labs where you are going to explain more of this stuff to me. Because this, this right here is good stuff, kid, and you’ve piqued my interest. So. Capisce?”

 

The kid looked torn between bewilderment, excitement and dread.

 

“C-capisce, Mr. Stark.”

 

 

+++

 

 

As the water rained down on Tony, washing away the dirt, grime and actual decomposed brain matter, he slowly realised that he did feel lighter. The tension in his shoulders eased away, like a huge weight had been taken off his back. It felt liberating to finally have everything out in the open between the two of them. They could finally stop tip-toeing around one another and acknowledge the elephant in the room. Knowing the full extent of the kid’s powers meant Tony could take the necessary precautions instead of agonising over it in his head. It was time for actual action. Armour the kid up, run the tests to see if he could get infected, maybe even extract some DNA to see if he could find anything in the kid’s blood that could counter the disease. Peter had said his abilities first popped up in January, about sixteen months ago. Tony could see if there were any connections between that and the zombie outbreak.

 

Now that the initial shock was subsiding, Tony could properly marvel at the groundbreaking scientific and biological discovery in front of him, if it could be called that. This kid was a fully functioning superhuman. Never mind enhanced senses, the kid could _lift cars and stick to walls._ He swung around on webbing that he had manufactured himself. That was fucking amazing.

 

The scientist in him was raring to go at the kid. He hadn’t even tested the kid’s strength.

 

_Worldview, Tones, worldview._

 

By the time Tony had dried off and slipped on some fresh clothes, he was actually feeling excited. This was good. Excitement was good. It kept his fear at bay. Negative thoughts were not allowed in his household anymore.

 

He was going to do better.

 

First step, take the nano-container off his chest.

 

It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for Tony to psych himself up to do it, but he did. He laid it gingerly on his bedside table, the silver metal clinking softly on the wood, sounding loud in the still air of the gigantic master bedroom. He didn’t need the suit, because the kid was not going to attack him. He wasn’t going to crawl into Tony’s room while he slept and strangle him. Tony was safe.

 

Peter needed to know that he was safe too.

 

 _Baby steps, Tony. Baby steps._  

 

The kid noticed. His eyes flickered to Tony’s chest when he entered the lobby again, and Tony felt pleased, oddly satisfied even, at the small, touched smile on the kid’s features. He felt like a child preening at an adult’s acknowledgement of a feat well-done. Which was a terrible analogy because one, a child wouldn’t need to be convincing adults that it wasn’t a threat to the adults’ safety, and two, he was a forty-five year old man and the “adult” was sixteen.

 

Second step, apologise.

 

“So...before we head off, I should probably say something.”

 

The kid cocked his head, his eyebrows drawn together.

 

“You’ve been doing a lot of the talking, and I’ve been talking a lot too, except in here.” Tony waved his fingers at his head. The kid’s eyes softened.

 

“I do that a lot too.” He said earnestly. Jesus, the kid could be sweet.

 

“Yeah, well, it’s sucks, bad habit, don’t do it.” Tony said, putting his hands in his pocket and swivelling on his heels a little awkwardly. “Because it leads to a shitload of miscommunication, which...I think there is an abundance of between us. We got a lot of shit to wade through if we are going to Tom and Jerry this world together.”

 

The kid frowned. “Tom and Jerry?”

 

“Pretend that reference makes sense. _Anyway_ , I have a point that I want to make. Well, less of a point and more of...more of an apology.” Tony sighed, running a hand through his hair and looking out the window. God, he was already exhausted. He was never any good at these - it had been the main reason why he and Pepper had had such a rocky relationship. If only he had said sorry to her more, maybe she would still be here.

 

She wasn’t though, and the kid was.

 

“Just now, I might have lost my shit a little. I mean, when we were talking here. I don’t know what my face looked like, but I scared you and...that wasn’t right.” Tony peered at the kid, because he couldn’t be a coward for the most important part. “I’m sorry.”

 

Peter’s face morphed into mild mortification as understanding dawned on him.

 

“No, no, no, Mr. Stark, that’s fine. It’s totally fine. That was just me. My head, doing weird stuff again. I’m not- you didn’t-you didn’t scare me.”

 

“Kid.” Tony cut across, exasperated. “You were giving me the scared eyes the whole time through lunch.”

 

“I wasn’t!” The kid insisted. “I was just scared that you would- you know, it would be too much and you would...you would change your mind.”

 

The kid ended his sentence softly, looking embarrassed. Tony sighed and scrubbed his face, again. Exfoliation was good at least.

 

“Yeah, that part. I _clearly_ gave off the wrong impression. Need to be more self-aware of body language, facial expressions, I’m used to be being alone. No one to misinterpret me. So...I’m sorry for that too.”

 

Two apologies barely a minute apart. He was a practically a changed man. He imagined Pepper’s eye-roll at that, that faint hint of a smile on her face.

 

He missed her. He missed her so much.

 

“But kid, the important thing is, I wasn’t going to hurt you, all right? I wouldn’t do that. There are just a lot of things you don’t know and it just gets messy sometimes.”

 

“I could know.”

 

The words were said so quietly Tony barely heard it. “Sorry?”

 

 _Does that count as a third sorry_?

 

The kid’s hand flew to his mouth like he hadn’t meant to say it out aloud. “I, no, sorry, i-ignore me.”

 

“Kid…”

 

“I just meant-” The kid gestured wildly with his arms, ears turning bright red. “If you wanted to tell me, I could...know. I’m...I’m here.”

 

The kid really was too sweet for his own good. Tony turned away again, scared that the sudden burning sensation in his eyes would progress into something much more embarrassing. He wondered if the kid’s enhanced hearing could sense incoming tears - sounded pretty ridiculous, but nothing could be too far-fetched now. He should just write down all the questions he had for the kid before he went to bed that night, hand it to the kid as a questionnaire, a "get to know" checklist, speed dating without the dating. What's your favourite colour? Comedy, action, romance, horror or drama? Star Wars or Star Trek? 

 

After a few deep breaths, Tony decided he was back in the safe zone.

 

“Labs?” Tony asked. Peter’s expression was completely neutral - no sympathy or pity - for which Tony was grateful. The moment of weakness was embarrassing enough as it was.

 

“Labs.” The kid replied.

 

They walked past the Stark Industries logo, sunlight glinting off its metal plates as the sun fell low in the sky, and towards the huge double doors leading to the elevators for the labs. The receptionist desk that would typically greet visitors sat empty, and the security gates now lay perpetually open. Tony could still see the lanyards stacked neatly on top of the counter - he hadn’t bothered to keep them. Dust had probably collected on them, like with so much of the rest of the Compound.

 

As they stepped through the doors, Tony slowed his step so that kid was directly beside him, instead of slightly behind as usual. The kid shuffled away a little at the proximity, probably out of habit, because he shyly stepped closer once more when he realised it had been a deliberate move by Tony.

 

“You sure you aren’t hungry?” Tony asked, voice echoing slightly in the empty hallway behind the doors. “You ate one sandwich. Isn’t extreme appetite supposed to be another superpower of yours?”

 

Peter smiled. Maybe Tony’s perception was coloured, but the smile seemed brighter than any that Tony had seen so far.

 

“Enhanced metabolism. I’m hungry _all the time_.”

 

The kid’s inflections were...different. Tony was sure he wasn’t imagining this. It was like the kid was speaking normally for the first time since he reached the Compound. Instead of timid or brittle or defiant, he sounded young and boyish. Like a sixteen year old. Maybe he felt lighter too.

 

“At the start, when food began to run out, it was a serious problem. I couldn’t get enough to eat.”

 

“Must have been tough.”

 

“Yeah, no kidding.” God, he sounded so normal, _relaxed._ Human. What had Tony been thinking? “I tried to go for energy drinks, thought maybe that would give me the energy boost I needed, but it didn’t quite work that way. Turns out, Mr. Stark, Red Bull is not a good substitute for solid food.”

 

Tony snorted. “I can attest to that.”

 

“Gave me some real bad stomach aches. Hunger pangs you know? One minute I was fine and the next, doubled over like someone was twisting my guts.”

 

“Ouch. Brings back bad memories.”

 

“Ha.”

 

This was probably the smoothest conversation that they had had since Peter arrived at the Compound. Just two people making conversation on a Saturday afternoon.

 

“How many months were you alone again?”

 

“Um, seven? Closer to eight?”

 

Longer than Tony. Alone in an empty shell of a once vibrant city - a city that had collapsed in on itself in barely half a year. God, that had to have messed with the kid’s head. No wonder he had straight out panicked earlier. He had thought he would be kicked back to that life by freaking Iron Man.

 

Tony was supposed to be a superhero. Instead, he had made a kid feel like he was going to be abandoned, again, in a world without people, filled with brain-eating zombies.

 

 _I’m an asshole._  

 

“So how long were, er, were you alone?” Peter asked, looking nervous. Shit, did he make a funny expression again?

 

“Not as long as you. Half a year, give or take.”

 

“You were in here the whole time.”

 

“Yup.” Tony said, popping the “p”. “Built myself a fortress.”

 

Peter chuckled softly. “Yeah, everyone thought you died in it. After the explosion.”

 

“News reached the city then.”

 

“There wasn’t any, like, media anymore. Internet was gone, televisions didn’t work.” Peter stared up at the top of the elevator they stepped in, squinting against the light that flickered on. “So it was all hearsay. That something short-circuited and Iron Man was gone. And I- I thought it was true. Because if you had been alive you would have…” Peter trailed away, and Tony felt that familiar stab of guilt.

 

“I would have come to save you all.” Tony completed the sentence for Peter, trying to keep his tone and face neutral.

 

His guilt must have bled through though, because Peter immediately backtracked. “No, no, no, no, no. Mr. Stark. Not like that! I didn’t mean, I know, it’s just that we-”

 

“Don’t worry, kid.” Tony sighed, as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. “I don’t blame you for thinking that. It’s just...I was having troubles of my own.”

 

“Yeah, I understand.” Peter said quickly. “We all, we all had our battles.”

 

_God this kid._

 

“I did search for people. After...after everyone here died, I flew out. I scanned the city.” The memory hung heavy in his head. “I didn’t find anyone. The concrete reduced the effectiveness of my radar. Lack of electricity, dying Internet. Couldn’t hack into a lot of systems anymore.”

 

“It’s a big city.” Peter said, nodding along like he was reassuring Tony. “I didn’t hear you either, and I have, like, super-hearing. So...we must have just missed each other.”

 

He should have flown to New York more. After a few trips out, Tony had headed for other areas, thinking that maybe in more rural areas with less zombies, there might be a higher chance of survival. After that, he had only gone back only a handful of times for supply runs - tech and only sometimes food, which meant his focus had been on science labs and the big warehouses or shopping centres, not residential neighbourhoods. He just hadn’t been looking for humans in those trips out.

 

“Well, you won’t have to worry about running out of food again.” Tony said, wondering as the words left his mouth whether that was a little too dark. Peter didn’t seem to mind though.

 

“The perks of having no pesky humans left, huh?”

 

Tony laughed, actually laughed. God, these were the things that made him laugh these days. He needed sleep.

 

He skipped past the labs set at the front of the research wing, and led the kid down the corridor towards one of the smaller, less intimidating labs. The walls there were a soothing grey and blue, rather than a harsh white, and the clutter around the room avoided the clinical look that the med labs perpetually had. Sure, the easiest way to win the kid over was probably to take him to Tony’s personal lab - the kid would probably freak out, except in a good way - but Tony...he wasn’t quite there yet. Besides, said lab currently housed Oscorp tech of questionable stability and most likely some empty alcohol bottles. Best to hide that damning indictment of Tony's emotional and mental stability for now, not that he had been a stellar model so far.

 

They passed the multitude of labs along the way, each illuminated in a ghostly pallour as the hallway light filtered through their glass walls - the kid didn’t seem to think so. He gazed into each with the same wide-eyed wonder as that morning, probably able to see the machinery and tech hidden in the shadows better than Tony. He looked a little disappointed when the glass panels gave way to panelled walls.

 

“We’ll get there one day, kid.” Tony said, smirking.

 

The first task of the afternoon was to get Peter to write down the exact steps for manufacturing the webbing. After equipping the kid with some pen and paper, since the neanderthal had looked too intimidated to write on a holoscreen, Tony retrieved the lab results. A small red box popped up when the holographic screen came to life, just as he had expected after his water usage. He flicked it away. Behind the screen, he caught Peter shooting him nervous glances.

 

“Remember, kid, not gonna kick you out. I just need to study your blood.”

 

The kid jumped, as if he had thought his glances were discreet. Tony rolled his eyes.

 

“S-sorry, Mr. Stark.”

 

“Get back to your work.”

 

“Yes, Mr. Stark.”

 

The DNA was certainly altered. It looked almost human except for small but vital differences in select nucleotides. He also found that the kid wasn’t far off comparing himself with a spider. Although there weren’t that many studies Tony could find right off the bat about arachnids, there were some basic similarities in the altered parts. Those could go towards explaining the sticky hands and feet. There was only so much he could look into for that though. Spider research hadn’t been on the top of his priority list when building up his internal database, and servers for journals that could have helped had crashed some time ago.

 

Overall, it seemed that it was the mixture of the DNA, the overabundance of platelets and white blood cells in the kid’s blood (that may explain the healing, although Tony was sure there was more to it than that) and the advanced synapse structure of the kid’s nervous system that yielded the magic 87.52 number. It was a hard, scientific calculation. The kid scribbling on a piece of paper in front him, looking for all the world like he was doing his homework, looked 100% human.

 

“I think I got it down.” Peter said, frowning at the paper.

 

“Cool.” Tony said, quickly scanning the last few lines of F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s analysis. He could look at this again tomorrow, when he had a good sleep and could actually read the words without the lines blurring into one another. “Let’s see what you got.”

 

It was a ridiculously simple formula, from Tony’s point of view. So ridiculous, and made with everyday ingredients, that it was even more impressive than before. This was someone who had made do with what he had.

 

Like Tony in Afghanistan.

 

“This is...really good stuff, kid. I can’t believe you made this webbing out of...is that hair gel?”

 

Peter’s ears turned a bright shade of pink. Another tell, except cuter. “I just played around with a lot of stuff.”

 

_He's not cute._

 

“Didn’t you have access to some of the best scientific labs in the world? Oscorp didn’t have anything better for you?”

 

“Yeah...someone seemed to have scraped those labs clean.” Peter shot him a look. “I figured either the CDC or the scavengers had got at them. And I started off making this stuff at school labs, anyway, and it worked just fine. Went into Hammer Tech once, just to use the machines there, but y’know. School labs just...felt nicer.”

 

Tony didn’t mention how the kid probably wandered back to more familiar places. In times of fear and isolation, humans often sought the comfort of familiarity - or at least that’s what Tony had read, on one of those nights when he had decided to read random psychology papers for fun because he was just _that_ bored. It probably explained why the kid stayed in Queens, and why Tony holed himself up in the Compound, spending days alternating between the lab and his bedroom, trying to breathe in the quickly-fading smell of Pepper’s perfume, replaying videos of his friends just in case he forgot how their voices and laughs sounded like. 

 

“So the labs being empty…that was you, wasn’t it?”

 

“Hey, hey, don’t accuse me.” Tony said, raising his arms defensively. “I didn’t know a teen was scrounging around looking to make spider-webs with the stuff. I needed it for my own experiments.”

 

Peter scoffed. “What are you gonna do with this web formula anyway?”

 

“Who knows.”

 

“Are you, are you going to manufacture it?” Peter asked, voice hitching a little, eyes peering at the screen.

 

“You want to?”

 

“I-I don’t, well, it’s your lab. I just, I’m fine.” Peter said, cringing even as the words stumbled out of his mouth.

 

“Sure, kid.” Tony said, rolling his eyes. “You can manufacture it. I wanna see more of this stuff anyway.”

 

The kid's grin was blinding, and infectious. 

 

They spent the rest of the evening tinkering, only taking a short break to defrost their dinner. Peter was given access to the chemicals he needed to make more web fluid, while Tony pulled up F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s coding and a model of the radar component in his suit to try and increase penetration levels. There was only so much he could do given current scientific progress and his extremely sleepy state though, and when the clock struck 11 p.m., Tony threw his hands up in defeat.

 

“I’m beat, kid. Getting old. Pushing 65 hours of no sleep, or is it 70? I don’t know. I need my bed.”

 

Peter grinned - he was doing that more often - and set down his tools. “I need it too.”

 

With a flick of his wrist, the lights in the lab began to power down. He gathered the papers strewn across his work bench into a messy pile, then stretched - a few joints cracked and one side of his neck was stiff. Maybe a quick stint in the massage chair before he slept. When he looked up, he found Peter staring at him.

 

“What?”

 

“I just...I've been thinking...and I wanted to ask you about it but then you were talking that time and then I forgot. But you turned off the lights-"

 

"Kid."

 

"Sorry. It's just...you said something this morning, about saving electricity.”

 

 _Right_.

 

“Isn’t...isn’t the arc reactor supposed to be, y’know, renewable? The buildings in the city are still running on it.”

 

“Yeah, well, that.” Tony fixed his gaze on the screens in front of him, the little red box from before blinking at the periphery. “That can be a conversation for another day.”

 

The kid looked mildly alarmed. “The reactor’s failing?”

 

_Failed. Failing._

 

“Kinda. I guess.” Tony clicked on the red box, figuring he should clear it before he shut down the computer. It maximised, red words blowing up.

 

_A Code Yellow fluctuation in power levels detected at 11.57 a.m. Systems intact, no further disturbances. Recommended action: Routine maintenance on arc reactor._

 

11.57 a.m.

 

That was about the time the trenches had been lit up.

 

The horde had been too much. They had overwhelmed more than just his traps. It was like before. Like with Happy.

 

“Mr. Stark, you coming?” Peter called out hesitantly, hovering near the door, a worried expression still on his face.   

 

Tony willed his hands to not shake, willed the memories to go away, back in to the corner of his mind where he had tucked them away. He closed the message calmly and powered down the screen, pushed down the familiar bubble of panic rising up in him. He would tell the kid tomorrow - Peter needed to know the risk. Step three - be more transparent, be honest. 

 

“Let’s go, kid.”

 

He would get the Oscorp tech to work. He would.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awww, Tony and Peter managed to make it through one day without massively screwing up much. :) The bliss of domesticity awaits...right?
> 
> Also, I am no doctor or scientist. Any medical or scientific facts are probably 99.5% off - the 0.5% is from my google research.


End file.
